Calif. shooters privately discussed commitment to jihad

During a conference in NY on Wednesday, FBI Director James Comey revealed the findings.

Comey said that in late 2013, before the Federal Bureau of Investigation suspects Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik met in person, “they [were] communicating online, showing signs of their – communicating their joint commitment to jihad and martyrdom”.

While Comey seemed to punch a hole through one of the key points of the case, it wasn’t entirely clear whether he was contradicting other reports that Malik had expressed her jihadist views via social media, even if not in public postings.

While Comey did not allude to the specific social network on which the two terrorists communicated, it is known that such messages transpired prior to the couple’s engagement and cohabitation in the United States.

Islamic State has “revolutionised” terrorism by seeking to inspire such small-scale attacks, Mr Comey said, noting that the group uses social media, encrypted communications and slickly produced propaganda to recruit followers around the world.

But Malik did reportedly pledge allegiance to the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, not long after the onset of the shootings in San Bernadino.

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama cited the Chattanooga shootings along with the recent San Bernardino, California, attacks as terrorist incidents but did not elaborate. “It’s often hard, as it is with San Bernardino, to untangle what particular sources’ competing foreign terror poison is out there”. “Those communications are private direction messages”. “These communications are private messages, not social media messages”.

The monitoring of social media as a way to identify potentially violent extremists was a hot-button issue during Tuesday night’s Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas.

The Department of Homeland Security is also working to add social media to background checks, officials said.

He said the threat from the Islamic State group has not changed – but it’s vastly different from how terror cells operated around the time of the September 11 attack.

The messages were also, Comey said, general in nature-about a commitment to jihad, rather than about specific plots.

The FBI has said the couple declared they were acting on behalf of Islamic State.

“One of the challenges in facing this hydra-headed monster is that if (ISIS) finds someone online, someone who might be willing to travel or kill in place they will begin a twitter direct messaging contact”, Comey said. And how could the mother do this?”She said she and her husband could give the orphaned baby “a stable upbringing.”“For the time being, we want her to enjoy her innocence, ” she told ABC News.