Bowdich confirmed that Malik had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a Facebook post and then deleted it before the shooting.
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A law enforcement official said it appeared the San Bernardino attack may have been inspired by ISIS, but none of the officials said that ISIS directed or ordered the attack.
Fox News reported that investigators believe there is a “very serious” possibility that Malik had radicalized her husband, who was a health inspector for San Bernardino county.
Malik praised the leader of the IS group in a Facebook post just minutes into the attack, a Facebook executive said.
Law enforcement officials quoted by The New York Times said the Federal Bureau of Investigation was treating the shooting as a potential terrorist act, but the idea of a workplace dispute gone wrong has not been ruled out.
“We are investigating it as an act of terrorism for good reason”, he said.
The FBI’s announcement does not mean that the agency has concluded Syed Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, were terrorists – only that investigators have gathered enough preliminary information to move their probe in that direction.
Since March 2014, 71 people have been charged in the U.S.in connection with supporting ISIS, including 56 this year, according to a recent report from the George Washington University Program on Extremism.
“This is looking more and more like self-radicalisation”, a law enforcement official said.
This video includes images from Getty Images.
We are now investigating these horrific acts as an act of terrorism.
The director, however, declined to say how they obtained the weapons were transferred to the killers.
The post was later removed – it is not clear if the posting was made before or after the attack.
Bowdich said that they found two broken cellphones at the trash bin in the suspects’ home.
The remarkable disclosure about Malik’s online activities provided the first significant details suggesting a motive for her participation with her husband, Syed Farook, in the shootings that killed 14 people and injured 21.
The attorneys recently sat with family members during a four-hour interview with federal agents, Chesley said.
Islamic State, which has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq, took claim for the November 13 attacks in Paris in which gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130. Malik had been subjected to vetting in order to get her USA visa process, which the United States government described as vigorous.
The two officials, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said that the family is originally from a town in Punjab province and that the father initially moved to Saudi Arabia around three decades ago for work. The couple had a six-month old daughter.
When police searched a house in Redlands that the couple is believed to have lived in, they found a stockpile of weaponry: 12 pipe bombs and “hundreds of tools to construct IEDs”, according to Burguan.
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The officials did not explain how they knew Malik was responsible for the post, CNN reported. “It was just, they see her at these family events, they talk to her, and that would be it”. Following religious tradition in their home, men and women would remain separated during social visits, and Malik wore a burqa, a robe-like garment that covers most of the face and is the most conservative Islamic apparel worn by women.
