Gun buyer, gunman linked by marriage, possible previous plot

Syed Farook and his childhood friend who supplied him with the guns used in last week’s shooting in San Bernardino had abandoned an earlier plan for an attack in 2012, according to Sen.

Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the couple who killed 14 people last week at a San Bernardino social services center, communicated with each other using encrypted devices, ABC News reported Wednesday.

Farook and Malik opened fire at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino on December 2, killing 14 people and injuring 20 others.

The new timeline suggests that Farook and wife, Tashfeen Malik, considered violent action before the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) rose to prominence previous year and began trying to inspire sympathisers to carry out attacks in the West.

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.

The U.S. State Department is looking into whether it missed any signs of Malik’s radical Islamist beliefs when U.S. officials in Pakistan scrutinized her request for a fiancee visa to come to the United States to marry Farook.

Mr Marquez, 24, spoke with federal authorities after they raided his mother’s house over the weekend.

A jury a year ago convicted two of those men, including Afghan-born ringleader Sohiel Omar Kabir, of conspiring to provide material support and resources to al-Qaeda and plotting to attack USA military forces in Afghanistan.

CNN says federal authorities are also “examining the circumstances of the marriage” between Marquez and Mariya Chernykh, a Russian woman whose sister is married to Farook’s brother.

But neighbors of Marquez say they never recall seeing his wife.

Marquez has told investigators he didn’t know about the plans for the San Bernardino shooting attack. It is unclear where he is now.

Marquez and his wife listed their address on their marriage license at the same Corona home where Raheel and Tatiana Farook live.

The FBI and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department on Thursday sent a team of divers to search a nearby lake, where investigators believe the couple visited on the day of the attack, according to an FBI spokesman.

Gulzar Ahmad Malik spoke to The Associated Press by telephone from Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, saying he is “very, very sad”.

The official has been briefed on the investigation but isn’t authorized to speak publicly.

“Whatever God does only he knows better, and only God knows why did it happen”, Gulzar Ahmad Malik said. “I am in such pain that I can not even describe it”.

The FBI has revealed little else of what it’s learned about Farook and Malik and their planning, except for details about the weaponry they had, materials they had to make more pipe bombs and that both had been taking target practice.