The couple who shot and killed 14 people in San Bernardino last week had been radicalized as early as 2013, FBI director James Comey said on Wednesday.
“They were actually radicalized before they started ... dating each other online, and as early as the end of 2013 they were talking to each other about jihad and martyrdom before they became engaged,” Comey said at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The FBI has been investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism and believes the couple were inspired by foreign terrorist organizations, he added.
Earlier on Wednesday, US attorney general Loretta Lynch had said that there was no evidence yet that Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik were part of a wider conspiracy or had planned any other attacks.
Some US media reports said Farook may have been plotting an earlier attack in California with someone else, possibly in 2012.
However, during a visit to London on Wednesday, the US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, said: “At this point in time, we do not have an indication that these two people were part of a larger cell. We do not have an indication that they were planning specific things beyond this attack, although that information is still evolving.”
She added: “We have done over 300 interviews of witnesses, individuals who have some connection, any connection, to these two killers. A number of locations have been searched, a number of materials have been taken in and are being reviewed and analysed.
“We are trying to learn everything we can about these two individuals, as individuals and as a couple, to determine why they chose that location, that event, that particular place to vent their rage. But at this point, [there is] no indication they were part of a larger cell or larger plot.”
Fourteen people were killed in the attack by Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, at a community centre in southern California. The assault rifles they used are believed to have been bought by Enrique Marquez, a childhood friend of Farook, who has been questioned but not named as a suspect.
Lynch confirmed that the radicalisation of the couple had been going on for some time, but added: “It’s really too early to tell at this point what was the genesis of it for either of them.”
She said about 70 jihadis had travelled from the US to Syria to join militant groups, a relatively small number compared to Europe, and the greater threat in the US was individuals responding to online radicalisation as a result of the large amount of material being pumped out by Islamic State.
“We’ve shifted from a time where we have had the orchestrated, well-planned, large-scale 9/11 attacks of al-Qaida, though al-Qaida is still a relevant terrorist organisation and in many ways trying to remain relevant,” Lynch said.
“We have shifted to the smaller, more low-tech attacks and what we see [is] a lot of groups like Isil using social media, using social propaganda seeking to broadcast their message in the hopes that it will resonate with people in the US. That has been their greater focus in the US.
“Their hope [is] that some individual, lost, unmoored, [for] whatever reason, drawn to a violent ideology, will connect with theirs and will then act on behalf of that ideology.”
