FBI Searches House In Community Near San Bernardino Shooting

On Saturday, the Islamic State’s radio station released a statement claiming that two of the group’s followers had carried out the shootings.

The broadcast came a day after Facebook confirmed that comments praising Islamic State were posted around the time of the shooting to an account set up by Malik under an alias.

ISIS is now referring to the San Bernardino, California killers as “supporters”. He also declined to rule out that future possibility. He cautioned that the investigation has not yet shown evidence the couple was part of a larger group.

But Director James Comey noted there’s still “a lot evidence that doesn’t quite make sense”.

He and Abuershaid said the family was shocked by the attack and mourns for the victims. They first met in person when Farook traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2013 during the Hajj pilgrimage, the attorney said. He would not elaborate. The maid spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing her employment with the family.

The Times and other media outlets, citing a senior government official who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Farook was in contact with a number of extremists and at least one person being monitored by federal officials, a Pakistani named Roshan Zamir Abbassi, who is an assistant Imam in San Bernardino, where Farook worshipped.

Bowdich said he was not aware of the IS-affiliated Aamaq news service report but was not surprised IS would attempt to link itself to the attack.

U.S. President Barack Obama said the country “will not be terrorized” and renewed his call for tighter gun control measures in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting in Southern California.

“We have to start looking at families”.

Bowdich also said the Federal Bureau of Investigation was examining crushed cellphones found near the shooting scene. Among things authorities had found were two cellphones that had been crushed in an apparent attempt to destroy the information inside.

“We’re talking in real time, stuff that you broadcast will have to be reported and taken down in a matter of seconds or minutes”, Balkam said.

Lawyers for Farook’s family urged the public not to rush to judgment.

Chesley and another attorney described Malik as a housewife who closely followed religious traditions. “There is no indication that they are part of a network”.

The couple’s orphaned six-month-old daughter is in the care of child protective services, and the family will try to obtain custody her next week. The FBI took over the investigation from local authorities Friday.

Malik’s path from Pakistan to the bloody events of this past week – when she and her husband Syed Farook hoisted rifles and slaughtered 14 people gathered for a holiday work party – remains a mystery. They say they didn’t know he was busy with his wife building pipe bombs and stockpiling thousands of rounds of ammunition for the assault on Farook’s colleagues from San Bernardino County’s health department.

One US official said there appeared to be nothing in Farook’s history that would implicate him as the driver of the attack.

Others have done so. In May, just before he attacked a gathering in Texas of people drawing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, a Phoenix man tweeted his hope that Allah would view him as a holy warrior.

“Unlike in the Middle East or even Europe, it is indeed rare for a woman to be involved in such a shooting in the US”, said Oren Segal, director of the ADL’s Center on Extremism. Though most are men, “women are taking an increasingly prominent role in the jihadist world”, the report said. “What I will say is again, we are continuing to run everything to ground we can about these two individuals”. They married in 2014 in Mecca, before Malik joined Farook in San Bernardino.

They said Farook reported meeting his future wife online.

“This is not a visa that someone would use because it is easy to get into the USA, because there are more background checks on this type of visa than just about anything else”, said Palma Yanni, a Washington-based attorney who has processed dozens of K-1 visas.

Foreigners applying from countries that are home to Islamic extremists – such as Pakistan – undergo additional scrutiny before the State Department and Homeland Security approve their applications.

On Sunday, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar said Pakistan was willing to give any assistance that the United States required to investigate Malik, and highlighted that she spent most of her life in Saudi Arabia.

Farook was born in IL to Pakistani parents and raised in California.