Previous reports indicate the husband and wife team behind the California mass shooting that killed 14 in San Bernardino were both devout Muslims. They floated the possibility that Farook could have been angry at co-workers who made fun of a beard that he was growing.
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In this combo photo shows the two suspects in the December 2, 2015, mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, (LEFT) an undated Student ID card photo from California State University, Fullerton, shows Syed Farook, the card was found in the Farook’s apartment after the landlord allowed entry to members of the media on December 4, 2015. The couple left their 6-month-old daughter with Farook’s mother before the slaughter.
The couple’s family have said they are “in complete shock” and had no indication that they were radicalised or had stockpiled weapons, ammunition and pipe bombs found by investigators at their home.
Bowdich said neither Farook nor Malik had been under investigation by the FBI or other law enforcement agency prior to Wednesday.
“This is now a federal terrorism investigation led by the FBI and the reason for that is that the investigation so far has developed indications of radicalisation by the killers and of a potential inspiration by foreign terrorist organisations”, he said on Friday.
Islamic State leaders, whose fighters have seized swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria as part of an effort to create a theocratic state called a caliphate, has urged sympathizers worldwide to commit violence in their countries.
Tashfeen Malik, 27, and her husband Syed Farook, a 28-year-old county restaurant inspector, carried out the precision attack during a holiday party Wednesday at the social services center in San Bernardino, before they were gunned down in an SUV a few miles away in a shootout with police.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It also turns out that Malik took to Facebook as the attacks began, and under an alias she pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State group.
Around the time of the attack, Malik allegedly made the post on Facebook under a different name, then deleted it, but investigators were able to recover it. The couple may have been planning an additional attack, he added.
Authorities said they had not pinned down a motive, but were continuing to investigate all possibilities.
His wife held a Pakistani passport and traveled to the United States on a K1 fiancee’s visa.
Chesley said Tashfeen, who met Farook on an online dating site in 2013 and married him a year later in Saudi Arabia, was traditional and devout. Pakistani intelligence officials said she moved from Pakistan as a child with her family to Saudi Arabia.
“This is a very traditional way of acting”, Abuershaid said.
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“It is unfair – it is a double-standard – for anyone to come out and say, well, you know, this person was a Muslim and therefore it’s terrorism and so on and so forth, when the Planned Parenthood situation arises and no one goes to the religious community and says, hey, what do you say?”
