USA TODAY International Edition
Killer couple were radicalized years ago
FBI chief says they talked jihad long before attack
WASHINGTON FBI Director James Comey told a Senate panel Wednesday that the killers in last week’s massacre in California were individually radicalized before they ever met online and discussed jihad more than two years before the deadly assault that left 14 dead and 21 wounded.
Comey’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee offers the fullest timeline yet for the radicalization of Syed Farook and wife Tashfeen Malik. Comey said Malik appears to have discussed jihad and martyrdom before she was granted a so- called fiancée visa in 2014 to enter the USA, where she later married Farook.
Those early communications, Comey said, indicate the shooters were “at least in part” inspired by the Islamic State terror group, also known as ISIL or ISIS. Because the earliest discussions of jihad in 2013 appeared to come before the Islamic State’s emer- gence as a global threat, Comey said investigators were reviewing other sources of similar radical thought that may have inspired the couple.
He said there was no reason to believe “cells” of operatives linked to the Islamic State were embedded in the USA, planning to strike. Largely based on the arsenal of ammunition and bomb components found in a search of the couple’s Redlands, Calif., home, Comey said authorities were trying to determine whether they had identified other possible targets.
The FBI director said the San Bernardino assaults represented another “dimension” of the terrorist threat, one distinct from last month’s attack in Paris, which left 130 dead. In that case, teams of heavily armed killers attacked a series of targets. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for those attacks.
He described the San Bernardino killers as violent extremists who prepared themselves below the radar of authorities while pursuing seemingly normal lives, only to strike out on their own.
In October, Comey said the FBI had about 900 active investigations involving Islamic State sympathizers or other violent extremists across the USA. He said Wednesday that those inquiries remained open in every FBI field division in the country.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D- N. Y., asked the director why Malik’s references to jihad and martyrdom were not detected by authorities or explored as part of a vetting process before she was granted the U. S. visa.
Comey suggested the couple’s communications were private and not accessible on public forums authorities could monitor.