San Bernardino Jihadi a ‘Constant Presence’ at Mosque, Recently Memorized Koran

syed-farook-license-photo-3
Drivers License

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) — The latest on the mass shooting at a social service facility in San Bernardino, California (all times local):

5:20 p.m.

Two brothers who attended the same Southern California mosque as a gunman who killed 14 people say he was a devout Muslim who showed up to pray every day before he abruptly stopped three weeks ago.

Nizaam Ali and Rahemaan Ali said Thursday that Syed Rizwan Farook had been a constant presence at the mosque for two years and had recently memorized the Quran.

The mosque, Dar Al Uloom Al Islamiyah, is in San Bernardino, the same city where Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire at a holiday party Wednesday. They later died in a gunfight with police.

The brothers remember Farook saying last year that he was traveling to Saudi Arabia to get married and that he had met his Pakistani bride online.

Rahemaan Ali says Farook seemed happy and his usual self when they last saw him. Both brothers say they never saw anything that would lead them to think he was capable of violence.

5:05 p.m.

A law enforcement official says the man who carried out the mass shooting at a holiday party in Southern California met his wife in Saudi Arabia in 2013 during the annual Islamic pilgrimage.

The official was briefed on the investigation but wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

The Saudi Arabian Embassy had no record of the trip to the Holy sites in Mecca and Medina, which draw millions of pilgrims from around the world annually.

Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people before dying in a shootout with police Wednesday.

– From Associated Press writer Tami Abdollah in Washington, D.C.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.