Syed Farook, left, and his wife Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people in a shooting attack at a center for the disabled in San Bernardino, California on December 2, 2015. (Photos from California Department of Motor Vehicles and FBI via AP)
WASHINGTON — The two San Bernardino shooters were radicalized at least two years ago and had discussed jihad and martyrdom as early as 2013, FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday.
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.
FBI Director James Comey testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, December 9, 2015. (AP/Susan Walsh)
FBI officials had previously said that the couple had been radicalized for “quite some time,” but the disclosure Wednesday was the most specific yet about the timeline of their relationship and progression toward extremism.
Get The Times of Israel's Daily Editionby email and never miss our top stories
Comey said the couple was clearly inspired by a foreign terror organization, but that investigators did not yet know whether their online courtship was arranged by such a group or developed naturally on its own.
“It would be a very, very important thing to know,” he said.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press.
Advertisement
Help us report truthfully on social media
As a multimedia journalist, my job is to take the quality, fact-based journalism produced by The Times of Israel newsroom and make it accessible across every platform — from Instagram posts to podcasts to short-form videos.
This is how many, especially young people, consume news these days. But misinformation is rampant on social media. Our team at ToI produces accurate, responsible short-form reporting on Israel and the Jewish world.
If you believe in the importance of factual social media journalism, please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. Your financial support is essential to sustain responsible multimedia reporting.
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you, David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on Google
