FBI team probing into terror angle in California massacre

The FBI is investigating the massacre of 14 people in California by a married couple armed with assault rifles as an “act of terrorism,” officials said on Friday, noting the wife was believed to have pledged allegiance to a leader of the militant group Islamic State. A federal law enforcement official said that the husband had contact with people from at least two militant organisations overseas, including the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front in Syria.

Both the US-born husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and his spouse, Tashfeen Malik, 29, a native of Pakistan who lived in Saudi Arabia for more than 20 years, died in a shootout with police hours after Wednesday’s attack on a holiday party at the Inland Regional Center social services agency in San Bernardino, about 100 km east of Los Angeles. Federal Bureau of Investigation officials said mounting signs of advanced preparations, the large cache of armaments amassed by the couple and evidence that they “attempted to destroy their digital fingerprints” helped tip the balance of the investigation.

“Based on the information and the facts as we know them, we are now investigating these horrific acts as an act of terrorism,” David Bowdich, assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Los Angeles office, said at a news conference. He pointed, in particular, to investigators’ discovery of two crushed cell phones left by the couple in a trash can near their rented townhouse.

One startling disclosure came from social media network Facebook, which confirmed that comments praising Islamic State were posted around the time of the mass shooting to a Facebook account established under an alias by Malik. However, it was uncertain whether the comments were posted by Malik herself or someone with access to her page.