Three U.S. officials familiar with the San Bernardino massacre have told CNN that the woman involved in the shooting authored — as the incident was occurring — a Facebook post declaring her loyalty to the leader of ISIS.
Tashfeen Malik’s post pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was made on an account with a different name, according to one U.S. official.
The officials did not explain how they knew Malik made the post.
Here’s what we know so far about Tashfeen Malik:
Married to Syed Rizwan Farook, born in Pakistan
Malik, 27, was married to Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, her accomplice in the shooting Wednesday that left 14 people dead and 17 injured. They had a rented apartment in Redlands, California, which neighbors San Bernardino.
Malik was born in Pakistan and lived in Saudi Arabia before coming to the United States on a “fiancée visa.” She later became a lawful permanent resident.
The couple had a 6-month-old daughter, whom they left with a grandmother the day of the shooting.
Mohammad Abuershaid, an attorney for Farook’s family, on Friday said the couple met via an online dating website. They met her in person when Farook traveled to Saudi Arabia during the Hajj pilgrimage in 2013.
“She was born and raised in Pakistan. And then at 18 to 20, she moved to Riyadh,” Abuershaid told CNN’s Chris Cuomo.
The couple were married in Saudi Arabia.
‘Nothing … out of the ordinary’
Like her husband, Malik wasn’t on any list of potentially radicalized people, and there was no evidence linking her to any terror groups overseas prior to news of the Facebook posting.
“There was nothing to show that she was extreme at all,” Abuershaid told CNN. “She was a practicing Muslim, she believed in the religion, and she was just doing the five prayers a day, the fasting… there was nothing to show that she was out of the ordinary. ”
Abuershaid said Farook’s sisters “would talk to [Malik], and they would see her once in a while. But it wasn’t something that they would be getting together every single day or every single week. It was just, they see her at these family events, they talk to her, and that would be it.”
Abuershaid said there was nothing to show she was responsible for radicalizing her husband.
