(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong).
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A police officer surveys a row of homes in Redlands, California, Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2015, as officials executed a search warrant following a shooting that killed multiple people at a social services center for the disabled in San Bernardino.
This undated combination of photos provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, left, and the California Department of Motor Vehicles shows Tashfeen Malik, left, and Syed Farook. Farook communicated with i…
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) – A change came over Tashfeen Malik two or three years ago.
The image stands in contrast to police reports that she and her husband donned commando-style black clothing during the assault on the holiday party, and that later she was seen as the one behind the wheel of the SUV when the gun-battle that left both husband and wife dead ensued.
Malik apparently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group on a Facebook post the day of the shootings, although lawyers for the family said they were not certain it was her. Facebook removed the post soon after the attack.
If the couple was radicalized, when, where and how did it happen?
USA officials have acknowledged that they had no information about the couple before the killing other than a routine request by Farook to grant Malik a visa so she could join him in the United States so they could marry. The large arsenal could indicate they were planning further attacks.
The same family member said that Malik, after moving to the USA, began posting messages of religious extremism on her Facebook page, an issue that was a source of concern for her family in Pakistan.
“We know that ISIL and other terrorist groups are actively encouraging people around the world and in our country to commit bad acts of violence, often times as lone wolf actors”, he said. In fact, none of them knew what she looked like as her face was always covered with the niqab.
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama will make a rare primetime TV address telling Americans how he will keep them safe following what will have been the deadliest terror attack since September 11, 2001, if terror links are confirmed.
Early on Saturday, authorities with guns drawn raided a home next door to the house where family of one the shooters in the San Bernardino rampage used to live in Riverside, California, breaking windows and using a cutting torch to get into the garage, neighbors said. That person bought the two assault rifles used in the shooting, but authorities haven’t been able to talk to him because he checked himself into a mental hospital after the attack, said a law-enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity. They lack clear evidence that the wife was radicalised overseas or that she in turn radicalised her husband, though they are actively investigating that, the official said. One official said those contacts were not recent and did not involve any significant players on the FBI’s radar.
Malik, 29, was born and raised in Pakistan and moved to Saudi Arabia around the ages of 18 or 20, the attorney said.
She returned to Pakistan to study pharmacy in the city of Multan between 2007 and 2012, according to Bahauddin Zakariya University, the school she attended. US investigators in Pakistan are now giving her background close scrutiny. “She started taking part in religious activities of women in the area”, the family member said.
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While radical Islamic groups at times have mobilized women as suicide bombers, and extremist women may exhort their men to attacks, it is extremely rare in conservative Muslim societies for female jihadists to take part in actual combat, as Malik did.
