Calif. — (NBC News) Tashfeen Malik pledged allegiance to the leader of ISIS just before she and her husband carried out the San Bernardino massacre, law enforcement sources told NBC News.
Malik posted a statement of support for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Facebook “just before the attack,” one official familiar with the issue said.
And now investigators are looking into whether the Pakistan-born Malik, who spent most of her childhood in Saudi Arabia, radicalized her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported that Pakistani intelligence has contacted Malik’s kin about Wednesday’s mass killing.
Malik, who is from the Layyah district in the Punjab province, returned to her homeland five of six years ago to study pharmacy at the Bahauddin Zakariya University in the city of Multan, according to Reuters.
The revelations came just hours after Farook’s brother-in-law insisted the slain suspect was an observant Muslim but not a “radical” and never gave any indication of what may have motivated him and his wife to attack the city’s Inland Regional Center with four guns and explosives.
Farook, 28, and Malik, 27, were killed in a shootout with police a few miles away — and more than four hours — after the bloodbath in San Bernardino. They had left their 6-month-old daughter with Farook’s mom before they went off to commit mass murder, police said.
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