Attacker said to have plotted in 2012
Evidence suggests plans of larger attack
WASHINGTON: Syed Rizwan Farook, the man at the centre of last week’s massacre in San Bernardino, California, might have plotted an attack as far back as 2012 with one of his longtime friends, senior law enforcement officials said on Wednesday.
In addition, the FBI revealed on Wednesday that Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were discussing jihad and martyrdom online in 2013 before they were married and she came to the United States.
The new timeline suggests that the couple were considering violent action before the Islamic State rose to prominence in 2014 and began trying to inspire sympathisers to carry out attacks in the West.
And the disclosures raise questions about how thoroughly US law enforcement and immigration officials vetted the wife before giving her a visa to enter the United States from Pakistan a year before the shooting, which left 14 dead and 21 wounded.
“ISIL inspiration may well have been part of this, but these two killers were starting to radicalise toward martyrdom and jihad as early as 2013,” FBI Director James Comey said during testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, using an acronym for the Islamic State. “And so that’s really before ISIL became the global jihad leader that it is.”
Mr Comey said the FBI still believed that the couple had been inspired by foreign extremist groups but that it had not found evidence the husband and wife team was ordered to attack by the Islamic State or any other group.
“We are working very hard to see if anyone else was involved in assisting, equipping or helping them,” he said. “And did they have other plans?”
The account of a possible attack in 2012, came from Enrique Marquez, a longtime friend and former neighbour of Farook’s, according to law enforcement officials who would only speak anonymously about a continuing investigation. Mr Marquez has been cooperating extensively in recent days with federal authorities, discussing at length his relationship with Farook.
Mr Marquez, a WalMart clerk who converted to Islam several years ago and sold or gave Farook the two assault rifles used in last week’s attack on county public health workers in San Bernardino, has told the authorities that in 2012 he and Farook had plans for an attack at that time. It is not clear why they decided not to go forward with it.
Mr Marquez, whose wife is a sister-inlaw to Farook’s brother, has also told investigators that Farook had radical beliefs but that he did not know Farook and his wife were plotting the recent shootings or what may have motivated them.
The authorities are still seeking to corroborate what Mr Marquez is telling them. Because he provided two of the four weapons used by the attackers, some investigators have questioned his credibility, thinking that he might exaggerate what he knows about the couple to win favour with the authorities. Mr Marquez is also said to have mental health issues. Shortly after the attacks, he checked himself into a mental health facility in California. He has not been charged or detained.
Clues also surfaced on Wednesday about what else the couple might have been planning. According to law enforcement officials, they had not finished building at least some of the dozen pipe bombs that were found in their home, leading investigators to believe they had a much larger attack planned for the future.
And although Farook had smashed his cellphones and taken steps to delete files from his computer, the FBI has been able to retrieve photographs from them. One of the images is of a local high school, suggesting to investigators that it may have been a target.
Law enforcement officials have also found that Farook had contacts with six people in Orange County, California, whom federal authorities had scrutinised at some point in recent years for their apparent ties to terrorism. While officials do not believe these people were involved in the massacre, the connections have suggested to investigators that Farook was associating with like-minded people.
In Mr Comey’s appearance on Capitol Hill, he said that the couple, whom some relatives say met on an online dating site, had become radicalised at least as far back as two years ago.
They were “talking to each other about jihad and martyrdom before they became engaged and married and were living in the US,” Mr Comey said. He said that the “investigation to date shows that they were radicalised before they started courting or dating each other online”.
Mr Comey said the conclusion came from “data” and intelligence that US authorities had obtained.
Malik declared allegiance to the Islamic State in a Facebook post around the time of last week’s shooting, which led the authorities to conclude the shooting was a terrorist attack.
But the authorities say the couple may have decided to commit terrorism in the name of the Islamic State late in the planning process, after their views had hardened and they had already committed to violence.