Female Suspect Made Facebook Pledge to ISIS, Officials Say

WASHINGTON: The woman who helped carry out the shooting in San Bernardino, California, on Wednesday had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a Facebook posting, according to federal law enforcement officials.There's no evidence the group directed the woman, Tashfeen Malik, and her husband Syed Rizwan Farook, to launch the attacks, which killed 14 and wounded 21, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.

"At this point we believe they were more self-radicalized and inspired by the group than actually told to do the shooting," one of the officials said.

The posting had been removed from the social media site and it's not clear when federal authorities obtained it.

In the days leading up to the shooting, the couple took several steps to delete their electronic information, in an apparent effort to cover their tracks, officials said. Those efforts have led authorities to believe that the shooting was premeditated.As investigators search for signs of a political or religious motivation for the massacre, the discovery of Malik's Facebook posting has forced them to consider whether any radical impetus for it came from her more than from the husband, or from both. The couple were killed in a shootout with the police after the attack.

FBI officials came up with no hits when they searched agency databases for Farook's name, according to law enforcement officials. That is significant because it meant that not only was Farook never the focus of an investigation, he was also never mentioned by anyone else interviewed by the FBI, even in unrelated cases.

The bureau, however, has uncovered evidence that Farook had contact with five individuals on whom the FBI had previously opened investigations for possible terrorist activities, law enforcement officials said. It was not clear, however, how significant the contacts were.

One individual contacted was associated with the al-Shabab, the Islamist militant group in Somalia. Another was associated with the Nusra Front, the Qaeda wing in Syria. None of the other three were tied to the Islamic State or core al-Qaida. All five inquiries was closed, and the contacts were made a few years ago, not recently, the authorities said.