The father of the jihad murderer characterized his ex-wife Rafia Sultana Shareef, aka Rafia Farook, as “very religious,” like the killer, to whom he referred as Rizwan. “Rizwan was the mama’s boy,” he recounted, “and she is very religious like him. Once we had a dispute about the historical figure of Jesus, my son yelled that I was an unbeliever and decided that marriage with my wife had to end.” The son insisted on the divorce because he considered the father an “unbeliever.”
What’s more, old man Farook said that his son was an open supporter of the Islamic State, and, of course, hated Israel: “He said he shared the ideology of al-Baghdadi to create an Islamic state, and he was obsessed with Israel.” Moderate “unbeliever” Papa then told his son to bide his time since, in the immortal words of Tom Lehrer, everybody hated the Jews: “I kept telling him always: stay calm, be patient, in two years Israel will no longer exist. Geopolitics is changing: Russia, China, America too, nobody wants the Jews there.” Moderate!
So right in the heart of sunny Redlands, California, where Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik lived with their baby and Rafia (however safely ensconced upstairs, away from the pipe bombs, Grandma may have been), there was an open supporter of the Islamic State and an open supporter of the concept of the caliphate. Then we must not forget the winsome Tashfeen, who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State during the attack, was linked to a jihadi mosque in Pakistan, and who had become, in one of her teacher’s words, “a religious person” who often told people “to live according to the teachings of Islam.”
But their motive remains unclear!
“FBI reassembles shredded plan for 2015 San Bernardino terrorist shooting,” by Brian Rokos, Southern California News Group, December 12, 2020:
Thin strips of paper, remnants of a handwritten diagram with notes that Rafia Sultana Shareef fed into a shredder just after the Dec. 2, 2015, San Bernardino terrorist attack, have been reassembled like a puzzle by federal investigators to provide a new account of the shooters’ planning for the siege that killed 14 people and wounded 22 others at the Inland Regional Center.
Corona resident Shareef, 66, also known as Rafia Farook, is scheduled for sentencing on Jan. 28 in U.S. District Court in Riverside after pleading guilty in March to one count of destruction of evidence. Prosecutors are not alleging that Shareef knew about the attack in advance.
The terrorists, Shareef’s son Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 29, died in a gun battle with police hours after the late-morning attack. At the time, it appeared that they took the answers to important questions with them.
But a sheet of paper that the radicalized Muslims left behind, with scrawls on both sides that included drawings of the IRC conference room and a to-do list for the week before the attack, appears to answer some of those questions five years later.
The document, which prosecutors say was in Farook’s handwriting, was among the remains of 19 items authorities found that they say are tied to the shredder that had been in the Redlands townhome shared by the shooters and Shareef….
“By destroying the significant evidence that Farook and Malik left behind, (Shareef) robbed the victims, the terror-shaken community, and the nation of direct clues as to Farook’s and Malik’s planning,” prosecutors wrote in the brief. “Defendant’s crime of obstruction and interference is uniquely serious in its knowing concealment of direct evidence of mass murder.”
It was unclear how Shareef knew of the attack plan’s existence – she told authorities she didn’t – or who shredded the other items. She did not mention shredding anything when police questioned her the day of the attack, authorities said.
And when the shredded remnants eventually surfaced, Shareef told investigators that she thought she had destroyed a map that showed a route to Big Bear. But the brief said investigators did not recover a map and that they believe Shareef might have remembered incorrectly.
Either way, the prosecutors argued, she knew she was destroying vital evidence….
One side of the sheet shows a diagram of the conference room including tables, chairs, a podium, a notation where “managers” would be sitting and the location of entrances and exits.
On the other side, beneath the words “cover fire” and “suppressive fire,” are two small diagrams of seating areas that appear to show the shooters’ tactical plans. Similar to a diagram from a football playbook, arrows extending from the letters F and M – which the DOJ believes stands for Farook and Malik – show paths through the tables.
The attack plan included apparent errands to be performed from Wednesday, Nov. 25, to Tuesday, Dec. 1, including some designed to cover the shooters’ tracks. Some of the handwriting was illegible or missing. But based on the shooters’ known activities, the FBI says it believes the entries include:
• Wednesday: “Transfer $5,000.” There were three transfers that week from Farook’s bank account to his mother’s.
Also Wednesday, “2 cars, 3 (unintelligible)” and “10 elb, 20 caps.” The FBI has confirmed that Farook purchased three remote-control cars at a store in Redlands on Nov. 25, the brief said. This entry also appears to refer to pipe elbows and end-caps that Farook used to build the improvised explosive devices that the FBI recovered from the Redlands home.
• Friday: “Go to Lyte (sic) creek @ 9.” This, as well as an entry for Sunday that includes “Lytle Creek,” refers to a shooting range near San Bernardino where the shooters practiced. Records from the shooting range show they visited the range on Friday, Nov. 27, the brief says.
• Saturday: “Rest of materials.” Sales receipts recovered by law enforcement show that, on Saturday, Nov. 28, Farook purchased galvanized pipe fittings, pipe plugs and wire connectors from a hardware store in Redlands.
• Sunday: “Destroy all electronics.”
• Monday: “Dest computers (unintelligible), flash drives, motherboards, cell phones.” The partial word “dest” appears to be shorthand for “destroy,” the brief said. The FBI recovered two smashed cellphones but did not find the hard drive from the shooters’ home computer. Also, “Take out money” and “clean room.”
• Tuesday: “Transfer $5,000,” “Revise all tactics” and “delete email accounts” are among the entries.
Investigators have interpreted a two-column chart to be a list of equipment to be carried in a backpack. The items include ammunition, food, money and possibly maps and a compass.
Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, reviewed the attack plan, provided to him by the Southern California News Group.
“To see the conference room laid out in a handwritten partial hit list is horrifying and something I never want to see ever again,” Levin wrote in an email. “If there was ever an exhibit on the banality of evil, it is the unremarkable way these terrorists methodically approached their secret set of daily tasks, as if they were planning a home remodel or camping trip, except here it was to perpetrate the worst American terror massacre (at the time) since 9/11.”…
The couple’s motive remains unclear….
mccode says
The couple’s motives remain unclear only to the willfully ignorant.
rooare says
+1
del says
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ag4nkSh7Q
Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY) says
What’s the best way to destroy a document? Burn it, or shred it? The bit-images of shredded documents can be reassembled with software, as described in this 9-year-old article:
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16036967
James Lincoln says
The late Philip Haney had discussed with Breitbart News an investigation that might have stopped the San Bernardino jihad attack… but was scuttled by Homeland Security brass for “P.C.” reasons…
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2015/12/11/dhs-whistleblower-philip-haney-p-c-killed-investigation-might-stopped-san-bernardino-attack/
Liz says
Thank you for posting this, I was just going to comment about Phil’s information; if only it had not been purged by the Obama Administration.
We need an update on his murder from the investigators too… Has anyone heard anything?
Donovan Nuera says
Nothing yet. Very strange “suicide”
gravenimage says
Deeply scary stuff, James.
Infidel says
Yeah, the motive has to remain ‘unclear’, so that ‘gold star parents’ like Khizr Khan can happily operate their Muslim Immigration firms unfettered. And now, w/ the open borders party in power, we can only expect more Syed Farooks and Tashfeen Maliks being let into the country. And the next time the next San Bernardino happens, we’ll all be asked to shut up by the likes of Ilhan Omar and Imam Obama
Rob says
Scum
andrew mckendrick says
Yes of course you will be asked to shut -up ,it`s for the good of diversity ,don`t you know?
gravenimage says
Agreed–except that Omar and Obama won’t be asking…
Ron B. says
The Motive is clear enough. Koranic verse 2;216 ,followed by instructions at Vs 2:218 . And if things do not appear to be going fast enough,9:29.
Only news reporters unable to string an original sentence together would find it hard to understand but the evidence and motive has been displayed before the World for 1400 years.
OLD GUY says
The motive is vary clear, it’s the disruption and fear they can produce in our society with the goal to install islamic rule and sharia law. They want the population to fear speaking out against islam and its violent false god.
gravenimage says
Shredded plans show San Bernardino jihadis made elaborate plans for their massacre, ‘motive remains unclear’
……………….
More willful denial…
Donovan Nuera says
Can someone mail the article’s author , Brian Rokos, a kuuuuran? or at least one of the many education books by this site’s author?
Donovan Nuera says
Is everyone starting to feel as exasperated as the old Phil Hartman SNL character in the skit about a small town newspaper editor trying to compose and edit the headlines and frontpage for the Dec 8, 1941 edition of the paper right after the Pearl Harbor sneak attack? All the other editors and reporters are clamoring to put articles about school plays, flower shows, or minor crime stories instead of the BIGGEST STORY of the 20th Century on the front page. The ending is hilarious.