US police search for links between California killers and terror groups
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THE couple suspected of killing 14 people at a holiday party in California amassed thousands of rounds of ammunition and a dozen pipe bombs, authorities said on Thursday as they sought clues to the pair’s motives and whether they had links to Islamist militants.
Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, were killed in a shootout with police five hours after Wednesday’s massacre at the Inland Regional Center social services agency in the city of San Bernardino, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles.
Another 21 people were wounded in the attack, which ranks as the deadliest instance of US gun violence since the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in which 27 people were killed.
The dead and wounded from Wednesday’s bloodshed accounted for nearly half of the estimated 75 to 80 people who were in the room where the armed couple opened fire.
San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan told a news conference that a search of the house leased by the suspects in the nearby community of Redlands turned up flash drives, computers and cell phones.
Tashfeen Malik, the female shooter, is believed to have pledged allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, CNN reported late yesterday, citing three US officials.
One official said she made the pledge in a posting on Facebook under an account that used a different name.
A US government source said the FBI was examining information indicating that Farook was in contact with individuals who had themselves been under FBI investigation, some from cases already closed. The source also said it was possible that one or more of the Farook contacts under scrutiny were overseas.
However, no information has emerged suggesting any ties or contacts between Farook and the Islamic State or other militant groups, the source said.
Officials from President Barack Obama to Police Chief Burguan said the attack might have been motivated by extremist ideology, but that questions of motive remain unanswered.
“It is possible that this was terrorist related, but we don’t know,” Obama told reporters.
“It is also possible that this was workplace related.”
Farook, a US citizen born in Illinois, was the son of Pakistani immigrants, according to Hussam Ayloush, who heads a chapter of the Muslim advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Malik, who had a 6-month-old daughter with Farook, was a Pakistani native living in Saudi Arabia when they married, Ayloush said.
The couple entered the US in July 2014 after a trip that included Pakistan, Bowdich said.
The director of the Islamic Center of Riverside, a mosque Farook attended regularly for two years, described him as a devout Muslim who made the pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia a few years ago and celebrated his wedding reception at the mosque.
“He was a very quiet person, peaceful, never had an argument with anyone,” the director, Mustafa Kuko, told Reuters
Kuko said Farook attended morning and evening prayers from 2012 to 2014, when he abruptly stopped coming.
Farook worked for the San Bernardino County Department of Environmental Health, the agency throwing the holiday party that came under attack.
Police cited witness accounts that Farook had been attending the celebration, but stormed off in anger, then returned with Malik armed with assault gear and opened fire.
Burguan said they sprayed the room with 65 to 70 rounds.
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