Gun buyer and gunman linked through marriage, previous plot

Marquez has been linked to the weapons used in the mass shooting last week in San Bernardino.

“Our investigation to date, which I can only say so much about at this point, indicates that they were radicalized before they starting courting or dating each other online”, FBI director James Comey, Jr. told a US Senate committee on judiciary affairs Wednesday.

Comey described Farook and Malik as examples of homegrown violent extremists who appear to have radicalized ‘in place’. “We’re working very hard to understand exactly their association and the source of their inspiration”.

Officials said Wednesday that Farook and an accomplice may have been plotting a different terror attack in 2012, but called it off as the result of the FBI’s Riverside investigation.

One source said investigators have little, if any, evidence that Malik or her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, had any direct contact with Islamic State, which has seized control of large swaths of Syria and Iraq and claimed responsibility for assaults in Paris last month that left 130 people dead.

Though Comey declined to answer questions about whether encrypted communication had been used before the attack, he did use the appearance to reiterate his longstanding concerns that criminals, terrorists and spies can use encryption applications on their smartphones to evade detection from law enforcement. This was before the rise of IS (Daesh), but Malik was said to have praised the terror organisation in a Facebook post.

“Investigators have said they believe the couple who gunned down 14 people last week in San Bernardino, California, planned their attack”. A State Department official said the K-1 program is now under scrutiny by an interagency committee that includes the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.

Marquez’s mother, Armida Chacon, sobbed as she told reporters Thursday that her son is a normal 24-year-old and a good person who loved to hang out with friends and go to parties, according to The Los Angeles Times. Records show the visa was decided on the day after the interview: May 23, 2014.

Past plot with former neighbor?

The radicalization could include Enrique Marquez – a friend who is related to Farook by marriage.

The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said the Federal Bureau of Investigation has developed information that Farook told at least one associate in 2011 or 2012 that he was considering a terrorist plot.

“It’s brand new that he has admitted that in 2012 they had something in mind and they didn’t do it because there had been some immediate arrests by the counter-terrorism people right there in the immediate area, and as a result they got cold feet”, Risch, R-Idaho, said on CNN. Marquez hasn’t been charged with a crime.

A passerby takes a picture of the townhouse rented by the San Bernardino attackers Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, Dec. 8, 2015, in Redlands, California.

American officials have said the pair discussed martyrdom and jihad as early as 2013, yet Malik was able to enter the USA on a fiancee visa past year.

Mounting evidence against Farook and Malik suggest the couple was preparing for a larger attack with about a dozen pipe bombs found at their home. But he did say that they had been inspired by terrorists operating overseas.