SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. — The FBI on Friday said it is investigating the San Bernardino massacre as an act of terrorism, with officials revealing that the Pakistani woman who teamed with her husband in the slaughter went on Facebook afterward to pledge her allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State.
Investigators are trying to determine whether the husband-and-wife killers acted alone — inspired, but not directed, by foreign Islamist radicals — or were involved in a more elaborate plot.
Hundreds of federal agents, in the United States and overseas, are looking for any contacts that the killers — Chicago-born Syed Rizwan Farook, 29, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27 — might have had with terrorist groups.
“The investigation so far has developed indications of radicalization by the killers and of potential inspiration by foreign terrorist organizations,” FBI Director James B. Comey said Friday. But he said that, so far, there is no evidence that they were part of a larger group.
There are a host of unknowns in this case, including whether the shooters had other targets in mind, a possibility suggested by the dozen pipe bombs and the thousands of rounds of ammunition in their apartment.
The shooters also sought to cover their tracks by damaging some of their personal electronic devices. Authorities found two crushed cellphones near the apartment and were examining other evidence showing that the shooters “attempted to destroy their digital fingerprints,” said David Bowdich, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office.
Farook and Malik were slain by police in a frenzied gun battle four hours after they killed 14 people and wounded 21 in an attack Wednesday at a gathering of county workers. For two days, FBI officials — as well as President Barack Obama — had expressed uncertainty about whether the rampage at the Inland Regional Center was terrorism or an unusual case of workplace violence.
But new evidence pointed to an ideological motivation rather than a workplace grudge. Law enforcement officials said that, after the shooting, Malik went on Facebook and pledged her allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, the terrorist group that says it has established a caliphate in Syria and Iraq.
A Facebook official confirmed the posting, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The official said Facebook, which is cooperating with law enforcement, identified and removed the post a day after the attack, saying any content praising an Islamic State leader violates its community standards.
Two criminal defense lawyers representing Farook’s mother, three siblings and brother-in-law held a news conference Friday and offered insight into the shooters, describing the husband as a loner and the wife as extremely conservative religiously, so much so that she would not be in the same room as her male in-laws. Malik’s brother-in-law had never seen her face.
“She did maintain certain traditions in terms of prayer and fasting. She chose not to drive voluntarily. She was a very, very private person. She kept herself pretty well isolated,” family lawyer David Chesley said.
“Syed didn’t want any fathers or brothers or brothers-in-law in the same room when she would also be there,” said another family lawyer, Mohammad Abuershaid. But the lawyers emphasized that there are no established links between Farook, Malik and terrorist organizations, and Chesley said it is inappropriate to assign culpability to Muslims broadly when someone who is Muslim is involved in a shooting.
