FBI investigators have pieced together more clues in the lives of Syed Rizwan Farook, a US-born Muslim, and his Pakistani immigrant wife Tashfeen Malik, in an effort to understand why they carried out the mass shooting at a Christmas work party in southern California that killed 14 people and wounded 21 others.
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Tashfeen Malik and husband Syed Farook opened fire at a workplace event for Farook’s colleagues, killing 14 and wounding 22.
Federal Bureau of Investigation divers have been involved in the operation two miles from the scene of the massacre in San Bernardino.
Farook, a 28-year-old county health inspector, and his Pakistani wife, Malik, 29, had begun communicating online, Comey said.
Investigators have said they believe the couple who gunned down the people last week in San Bernardino, California, planned their attack.
Marquez has not been charged with a crime, however, law enforcement probing the shooting are trying to determine if he and Farook “were plotting an actual attack” that was eventually aborted in 2012.
As federal authorities attempt to piece together the circumstances surrounding the San Bernardino attack, they’ve been questioning Enrique Marquez, a former neighbor and friend of Farook. In a briefing to lawmakers Thursday, FBI Director James B. Comey made clear he would not talk about Marquez.
A bespectacled cycling enthusiast who reportedly wanted to join the U.S. Navy, Marquez converted to Islam several years ago and attended the same mosque as other members of the Farook family, but members of the Islamic center he attended said his presence was infrequent, the Times reported.
Authorities said the shooters, who killed 14 people at a holiday gathering on December 2, had been in the area. The two were killed hours later in a shootout with police, leaving behind a 6-month-old daughter.
It’s unclear how much Marquez may have enabled the San Bernardino killers to do what they did, but if his testimony to investigators is credible, he might prove essential in explaining how and why they did it.
Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Malik was subjected to an in-person interview during the application process for a visa.
This radicalization appears to predate the rise of the Islamic State, the terrorist group that in 2014 formally declared a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria.
The drive could hold evidence on other attacks the couple was possibly planning.
“Emotional and physical scars that were suffered by them will take years to overcome and some of them will never get over their emotional scars”, Bowdich said. The FBI director added, “Increasingly, we are unable to see what they say, which gives them a tremendous advantage against us”.
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“We don’t have any indications right now that the screening process for Miss Malik was any different than it is for any fiancée or that there were any things missing inside this very vigorous screening process”, Kirby said.
