ISIS: ‘We pray to God to accept them as martyrs’
THE FBI’s investigation of the San Bernardino massacre is turning to the mother of the gunman, as eyewitnesses claim Tashfeen Malik was the mastermind.
Attackers Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook were married
FBI probes family members of terror couple for answers
Malik pledged allegiance to ISIS on Facebook
Data being extracted from smashed mobile phones, laptops
THE FBI’s investigation of the San Bernardino massacre is turning to the mother of the gunman, as eyewitnesses claim Tashfeen Malik was the mastermind.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch revealed that the FBI is looking into whether the mother of Sayed Rizwan Farook was aware of the criminal activities of her son and his wife.
“Obviously, it’s something that we’re looking at very, very closely,” Lynch said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Police said that Rafia Farook lived in the same house in Redlands, California, where her son, Syed Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, were concocting their evil plan to murder workers at the Inland Resource Center.
After raiding their home, police discovered 15 pipe bombs and that the couple was stockpiling thousands of rounds of ammunition.
MORE: Inside the home of the San Bernardino terror couple
Farook and Malik were carrying two .223-caliber rifles — a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 and a DPMS model — which were originally purchased in 2011 and 2012 by a friend of Farook’s who was also a neighbour.
His home has also been raided by police.
The target of the raid was Enrique Marquez, who is believed to have been the individual who three years ago bought the AR15 rifles in California used in the San Bernardino attack.
Marquez checked himself into a mental health facility after the attack, CBS news reports.
Investigators are not aware of how his rifles were transferred to the couple before they stormed the Center, a social services agency where dozens were enjoying themselves at a holiday party.
Marquez is not a suspect in the shootings at this stage.
Officials also that they cannot say if terrorist group ISIS specifically played a significant role in the couple’s radicalisation.
Another official said there’s still no evidence that the couple was in direct contact with any terror groups or individuals overseas before the attack.
The Italian newspaper La Stampa reported Sunday that Farook’s father, also named Syed, said that his son agreed with the goal of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi to create an Islamic state.
A representative of the newspaper told NBC News that the father said the father was quizzed by the FBI for seven hours.
‘Terror bride fired first shots’
Malik fired the first shots in last week’s San Bernardino massacre while her husband appeared to hesitate before opening fire, The Sunday Times of London is reporting.
The eyewitness reports stated Malik opened fire straight away after the pair entered a conference room at the Inland Regional Center, but Farook held his fire — either because he had lost his nerve or because he was looking for a particular target.
Malik also opened fire on police from the back seat of the couple’s vehicle after the paid fled the scene.
The new reports are strengthening suggestions that Malik was the mastermind behind the attack which left 14 people dead.
The New York Post reported that investigators into the shooting believe she may have been a “honey trap” leading Farook into jihad.
Islamic State name the husband-wife terrorists as “soldiers” of IS on their official radio station on Saturday, a day after it was revealed that Malik had pledged her allegiance to the terror group.
“We pray to God to accept them as martyrs,” the terror outfit said in a broadcast on al-Bayan Radio, stopping short of claiming responsibility for the attack.
Officials revealed on Friday that Malik posted a “bayat,” or pledge of allegiance, to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi just before the attack. No actual back-and-forth communication between the jihadist group and the hate-filled couple has been disclosed.
Malik’s post, which has since been removed from Facebook, went up at 11am Wednesday local time — about the same time the duo opened fire at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, killing 14.
Her husband had contact with people from at least two jihadist groups overseas, according to a report.
Farook communicated with the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front in Syria and with al-Shabaab in Somalia, sources said, confirming accounts in the LA Times.
Federal investigators are probing Farook’s phone and social-media activity for terrorism-related communications and have found contacts with at least one person under investigation for terrorism connections, CNN reported. “These appear to be soft connections,” meaning infrequent contacts, an official told CNN.
Farook’s last terrorism-related communication was months ago, the network reported.
“We don’t know yet what they mean,” an official told CNN.
The disclosures offered deepening proof that Farook and Malik were at least inspired by foreign militant groups.
Nerves remained jittery in the California neighbourhood where the couple lived with their 6-month-old daughter.
On Friday night, bomb technicians were deployed to inspect a package that was delivered by UPS to the couple’s town house. On Saturday, local police tweeted that the box turned out to be a delivery of clothes from department store Sears for Farook’s mother.
Neighbours displayed American flags in the fronts of their houses, and passers-by waved still more flags outside their car windows as they drove by the couple’s boarded-up home, reports the New York Post.
A changed woman
In the final few years of Malik’s life, the people around the young woman saw her dress ever more conservatively and urge people to live a devout life.
For an aunt in Malik’s hometown in Pakistan, Malik’s growing religious focus was one of the last things the aunt heard about her 29-year-old before last week, when the relative learned that her niece and her niece’s husband had donned face masks, hoisted assault rifles and killed 14 people in a rampage in the US where they now lived.
“I recently heard it from relatives that she has become a religious person, and she often tells people to live according to the teachings of Islam,” recalled aunt Hifza Batool.
Batool spoke in the town of Karor Lal Esan, the home of Malik’s family, 450km southwest of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.
Malik’s path from Pakistan to the bloody events of this past week — when she and her husband slaughtered people gathered for a holiday work party — remains a mystery.
Officials from the FBI, family lawyers and others said they know little about the housewife and mother, apart from what came to light on Friday: that Malik had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group on Facebook as she and her American-born husband launched the massacre.
The pair were killed in a furious shootout with police hours after they opened fire on a gathering of Farook’s colleagues from the San Bernardino County public health department, where he worked as a restaurant inspector.
The FBI said it was investigating the rampage as a terrorist attack.
Farook was born in Chicago to Pakistani parents and raised in southern California. Malik arrived in the U.S. in 2014 on a Pakistani passport and a fiancee visa but had spent extended periods of time in Saudi Arabia.
She started studying pharmacy at Bahauddin Zakariya University in the Pakistani city of Multan in 2012.
A maid who worked in the Multan home where Malik lived said that Malik initially wore a scarf that covered her head but not her face.
A year before she got married, she began wearing a scarf that covered all but her nose and eyes, the maid said. The maid spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardising her employment with the family.
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