Female Attacker Pledged Allegiance to Islamic State, Al Qaeda Links Emerge

Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, who killed 14 people and injured dozens more on Wednesday, have connections to radical Islamic groups, officials say.

New details related to the Islamic terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, California have emerged, revealing the possibility that the shooters were in contact with members of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Investigators believe that the female attacker pledged allegiance to the Islamic State as the rampage was ongoing.

During the jihadi attack, Tashfeen Malik posted on Facebook that she was pledging allegiance to Islamic State “caliph” Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, officials told CNN. The investigators said she used an account under a different name.

Law enforcement sources told multiple news outlets that the bombs created by the two jihadis resembled models for which instructions were provided in Al Qaeda’s “Inspire” magazine, which was thought to be the creation of deceased Al Qaeda leader Anwar Al-Awlaki. One particular issue of “Inspire” printed a guide on “how to build a bomb in the kitchen of your mom.”

Awlaki – who served as the Imam of the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Virginia during the 9/11 attacks, then left the country to become a leader in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – has been credited as the inspiration for several other Islamic terror attacks in the United States. The Fort Hood jihadi, Nidal Hasan, had a demonstrated connection to Awlaki, communicating with Al Qaeda’s chief recruiter directly. Additionally, the Boston Marathon bombers, Dzokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, held a collection of propaganda clips from Awlaki.

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