Revelations that the San Bernardino attackers were radicalised years earlier, before Islamic State was created and before they met, has raised questions about how they slipped under the security radar.
FBI investigators have pieced together more clues in the lives of Syed Rizwan Farook, a US-born Muslim, and his Pakistani immigrant wife Tashfeen Malik, in an effort to understand why they carried out the mass shooting at a Christmas work party in southern California that killed 14 people and wounded 21 others.
FBI director James Comey told a senate panel on Wednesday that while the attack may have been inspired by Islamic State, the couple "were starting to radicalise towards martyrdom and jihad as early as 2013", which was before the militant group was established.
Islamic State first featured on the international scene in 2014 when the group formally declared the creation of a "caliphate", a state governed under Islamic law, covering parts of war-torn Syria and Iraq.
Enrique Marquez, a close friend and former neighbour of Farook, and a relative by marriage, has reportedly told investigators that he and the 28-year-old California health inspector had planned an attack in 2012 but "got spooked", one investigator told CNN.
Mr Marquez, whose wife is a sister-in-law of Mr Farook’s brother, has been identified by investigators as the purchaser of two assault rifles used in the deadly gun attack on December 2nd. His credibility has been questioned, however, as law enforcement officials believe he may be embellishing what he knows in a bid for leniency. He also checked himself into a mental health clinic after the attacks.
Investigators have focused on trying to determine whether the 2014 marriage between Farook and Malik was genuine. The couple had a six-month-old daughter whom they left with the child’s grandmother before they carried out the massacre at a social services centre. The pair were killed hours after their rampage in a shoot-out with police. They left behind about a dozen pipe bombs, some of which, investigators say, had not been finished, suggesting that they were perhaps planning a larger future attack.
Mr Comey told the senate judiciary committee that the FBI investigation has shown that the couple were “radicalised before they started courting or dating each other online”.
The marriage appears to have been arranged by their families. Malik’s father, Gulzar Ahmed Malik, told the New York Times that he met Farook’s mother during the annual hajj pilgrimage in the Saudi city of Mecca in July 2013. They spoke about how they were looking for religious spouses for their respective children.
Malik and Farook were later married by telephone, a union that was celebrated in person by the couple in Saudi Arabia in July 2014. The couple were photographed passing through O'Hare airport in Chicago.
Malik travelled to the US with Farook on a K-1 90-day visa that allows people who plan to marry a US citizen to enter the country. The focus of the multiple checks carried out by immigration officials appears to have been on whether the marriage was legitimate rather than on learning whether Malik (27) held jihadist tendencies. She grew up in central Pakistan and studied pharmacy in the southern city of Multan, where she attended an Islamic centre for women.
“No one could ever think she could so such a heinous thing,” said Farrukh Choudhry, a spokeswoman for the religious study centre, the Al-Huda International Welfare Foundation.
