FBI: San Bernardino shooters did not post online support for jihad
Syed Rizwan Farook and wife, Tashfeen Malik, discussed terrorism privately but not in open, director says; admits Malik was let into US after being radicalized
NEW YORK — The husband-and-wife team who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, communicated privately about jihad before they were married, but there is no evidence to suggest the couple posted publicly on social media about it, the FBI director said Wednesday.
James Comey said the couple communicated online before they met in person, during which they discussed a mutual commitment to jihad and martyrdom.
Comey also said the July 16 attack in Chattanooga on two military sites where five US service members were killed was terrorism. The FBI had previously hesitated to call it a terror attack.
Comey said he understands Americans are jittery, but citizens should try to channel their awareness into vigilance, not panic.
Comey told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that investigators believe that Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were radicalized even before they began their online relationship and that Malik held extremist views before she arrived in the US last year.
Comey’s comment means that Malik’s radicalization had already begun when she applied for a visa to come to the US to get married, and that the government’s vetting process apparently failed to detect it.
Malik moved from Pakistan to the US in July 2014 and married Farook the following month. Farook was born in Chicago in 1987 and raised in southern California.
