United States get cracking on terror investigation

 The FBI’s wide-ranging terror probe into the grisly mass shooting in California by a Pakistani woman and her husband that claimed 14 lives has expanded to Pakistan and other countries as concerns over radicalisation mount in the US. 

“Pakistan is one of those countries, there are other countries also involved,” Loretta Lynch, US Attorney General told the media. “This investigation is ongoing. It’s wide ranging, It’s very complex. This is an FBI investigation now because of the indications that we do have of radicalisation. This is a terrorism investigation at this point in time but we continue to work closely with our state and local counterparts, also ATF Marshals are on the on the ground,” Lynch added.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is leading the probe into the killing, described as an act of terror by US President Obama. Tashfeen and Farook married in Saudi Arabia some two years ago after they initially came in contact over a matrimonial site. Tashfeen, who spent most of her life in Saudi Arabia, was in Pakistan to complete her studies, before coming to the US as a fiance of Farook, a US national of Pakistani-origin. 

Tashfeen Malik, 29, attended one of Pakistan’s most high-profile religious seminaries for women, a teacher at the madrassa said on Monday. 

She studied at the Al-Huda Institute in Multan, which targets middle-class women seeking to come closer to Islam and also has offices in the US, the UAE, India and the UK, the teacher at the seminary, who gave her name only as Muqadas, said. The institute has no known extremist links, though it has come under fire in the past from critics who say its ideology echoes that of the Taliban. Investigators suspect Tashfeen of radicalising her husband.

US investigations so far have not thrown indication of why the couple picked up guns and became murderers. 

Lynch said the US is also talking with Saudi authorities. “I’m not able to go into a lot of specifics, but it will be a long process, it will be an exhaustive process,” she said.