San Bernardino killers talked jihad and martyrdom in 2013
WASHINGTON — The two San Bernardino, Calif., shooters were radicalized at least two years ago — a year before one of them came to the U.S. on a fiancée visa — and discussed jihad and martyrdom as early as 2013, FBI director James Comey said Wednesday.
Comey told the Senate judiciary committee investigators believe Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were radicalized even before they began their online relationship and Malik held extremist views before she arrived in the U.S. last year.
The comments suggest the government’s vetting process failed to detect Malik’s radicalization when she applied for the visa. Comey said he didn’t know enough to say whether weaknesses in the visa process enabled her to enter the U.S.
Reached in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, Malik’s father condemned his daughter’s actions and said he is “very, very sad ... I am in such pain that I cannot even describe it.”
Gulzar Ahmed Malik has been a resident in the kingdom since the early 1980s, the Saudi interior ministry says. His daughter was from Pakistan but travelled to Saudi Arabia. A former classmate, Afsheen Butt, said Malik showed drastic changes after a trip to Saudi Arabia in late 2008 or early 2009.
Malik came to the U.S. in July 2014 from Pakistan after being approved for a K-1, or fiancée visa. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has said the Obama administration is now reviewing the program. He did not say what changes were being considered.
Malik married Farook the following month. Farook was born in Chicago in 1987 and raised in Southern California.
Comey said the couple was clearly inspired by a foreign terror organization, but investigators did not yet know whether their online courtship was arranged by such a group or developed naturally on its own.
The FBI director described the couple as an example of homegrown violent extremists who appear to have radicalized “in place,” drawing a distinction between the San Bernardino attack and the one last month in Paris officials suspect involved planning and training in Syria.
While evidence shows the couple was “at least in part inspired” by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, Comey said officials had not ruled out other sources of inspiration, in part because the radicalization process took place before the terror group had become the global presence it is.
He also declined to say what role, if any, encrypted communications played in the massacre.