WASHINGTON / NEW YORK: As the San Bernardino, California, attack was taking place, alleged shooter Tashfeen Malik posted a pledge of allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, chief of the militant Islamic State (IS) group, investigators told CNN.

Malik’s post on Facebook was made on an account with a different name, one of the officials said. The officials did not explain how they knew Malik made the post.

Another US official said they had reasons to believe that the attack at a county office in San Bernardino might have been inspired by IS.

Fourteen people were killed and 21 wounded when Tashfeen and her husband Syed Rizwan Farook attacked a San Bernardino Health Depart­ment’s annual party with handguns. Both were killed in a shootout with police hours later.

Officials who spoke to other US media outlets about Tashfeen’s motivation, however, said they had no reason to believe that IS directed or ordered the attack. “This is looking more and more like self-radicalisation,” one of them said.

“It would be irresponsible and premature for me to call this terrorism,” FBI official David Bowdich said. “The FBI defines terrorism very specifically, and that is the big question for us: What is the motivation for this?”

Another official said investigators had a greater focus on whether the shooting occurred after a workplace issue with religion.

A lawyer said relatives had no idea why the couple burst into the holiday luncheon for Farook’s co-workers and viciously opened fire. Nor did they know that the couple had a makeshift bomb lab in the apartment they shared with their six-month-old daughter and Farook’s mother. The family also did not know that either of them had become radicalised, family attorney David Chesley said.

Another family lawyer Mohammad Abuershaid said it would be wrong to link Farook’s trips to Saudi Arabia to terrorism as he went there first in 2013 to perform Haj. He went again in 2014 to marry Malik, whom he’d met through an online dating service.

Mr Abuershaid said there was nothing to suggest that Tashfeen was extremely religious. “Both were normal people,” he added.

While FBI’s Bowdich said that Farook had travelled to Pakistan in 2014, Mr Abuershaid said, “He never travelled to Pakistan.”

The family lawyer said it would be wrong to focus on the shooters’ religion. “These are isolated individuals that don’t speak for the majority of Muslims,” he said.

Investigators said the couple had destroyed the hard drive of their computer and smashed their mobile phones, which showed a deliberate attempt to hide their tracks.

Investigators said instead of one particular motive, they were now looking at various issues that might have caused the attack, including Farook’s apparent radicalisation and workplace tensions.

They confirmed that neither Farook nor his wife had gotten into trouble with the law. Neither was on any list of potentially radicalised people, and they had no clear ties to any overseas terrorist groups.

Published in Dawn, December 5th, 2015