The FBI is investigating the fatal shooting of 14 people in California by a married couple as an “act of terrorism”, officials said Friday, noting the wife was believed to have pledged allegiance to a leader of the militant Islamic State group.
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The source said Facebook discovered the post from Tashfeen Malik after searching its user database for the shooters’ names. During a press conference Friday, the attorneys for the Farook family said Malik and her husband met on an online dating website.
Now, multiple news outlets are reporting Tashfeen Malik pledged allegiance to ISIS.
“The investigation so far has developed indications of radicalization by the killers and of potential inspiration by foreign terrorist organizations”, Comey said.
Malik had not come to the attention of authorities while living in Saudi Arabia, according to a source close to the Saudi government.
A Facebook spokesman said the profile in question was removed by the company Thursday for violating its community standards barring promotion or praise for “acts of terror”. They say the family is originally from the Pakistani town of Karor Lal Esan, about 200 miles southwest of the capital of Islamabad in Punjab province.
None of those contacts were significant enough to put either Farouk or Malik on the bureau’s radar screen prior to this week, he said, and the FBI is still trying to determine what to make of them, suggesting at one point that the contacts may have been innocent. An upstairs bedroom had a crib, boxes of diapers and a computer.
Farook had no criminal record, and neither he nor his wife was under scrutiny by local or federal law enforcement before the attack, authorities said. Farook, a 28-year-old restaurant health inspector, was born in Chicago to Pakistani parents and raised in California.
Law enforcement officials have long warned that Americans acting in sympathy with Islamic extremists – though not on direct orders – could launch an attack inside the U.S. Using slick propaganda, the Islamic State in particular has urged sympathizers worldwide to commit violence in their countries.
It also stoked fears that people who are radicalized or supportive of Islamic State could enter the United States alongside refugees from Syria or elsewhere.
Malik was a Pakistani native who moved to the U.S.in 2014 on a fiancee visa.
“Until there is absolute clear evidence, every headline doesn’t have to say “Muslim massacre” or ‘Muslim shooters, ‘” said David Chesley, a lawyer for the family of Syed Farook, part of the husband-wife team allegedly behind the attack.
That’s a step beyond earlier this week, when police said they knew nothing conclusive about the possible motivation of Farook or his wife.
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She was here legally on what’s commonly known as a “fiancée visa”. “None of the family members had any idea that this was going to take place”.
