Syed Farook’s Mother a Suspect in the San Bernardino Slaughter?
Evidence is mounting the mother of Syed Razwin Farook, who with wife Tafsheen Malik killed 14 injuring 21 in the San Bernardino Jihad Massacre, may become a suspect in the Islamic Terrorism plot. Packaging, gun range practice targets and tools were found in the car registered in the name of Rafia Farook. Moreover, Fox News intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge disclosed that Syed Farook’s Union bank records showed a $28,500 deposit from the alleged proceeds of a loan from the Utah-based web bank.com two weeks before the December 2nd attack at the Christmas Party gathering of the County Health Department.
The records further revealed three transfers of $5,000 each, totaling $15,000, were made to Syed’s mother.
Further, there was evidence in the Redlands , California rented home that Rafia had been a member of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), a Pakistani fundamentalist Muslim group, whose adherents in the U.S. had been involved in terrorism plots both in the U.S. and in Pakistan. Rafia had lived with her son Syed and his late wife Ms. Malik allegedly caring for their six month old daughter. Lawyers for Rafia had denied she had any knowledge of her son Syed and his wife Tashfeen amassing weapons, ammunition and manufacturing pipe bombs and IEDs in the garage of the rented Redlands, California town house.
Fox News’ Megan Kelly File reported on the evidence found in Rafia’s registered car:
Trace Gallagher reported on “The Kelly File” that FBI agents found an empty GoPro camera package, shooting targets and tools inside a car belonging to Rafia Farook, the mother of Syed Farook.
Gallagher said those items raised a number of red flags because investigators know that the husband and wife killers took numerous trips to gun ranges for target practice and were building homemade explosive devices, which could explain the targets and tools.
Gallagher said that the GoPro package is significant because even though authorities have denied that the shooters strapped cameras to themselves before the massacre, mounted GoPros have been used by ISIS followers in other attacks.
“Even mundane items found inside the car, like U-Haul receipts and notebook and legal documents could ultimately help answer whether the mother could have driven the car and not noticed the tools and targets, could have lived in the house and not noticed the so-called ‘IED factory’ in the garage,'” Gallagher said.
He added as the investigation has unfolded, Rafia Farook has been placed on a terror watch list.
“When it comes to what, if anything, the mother knew, Attorney General Loretta Lynch says they are looking very, very closely,” Gallagher said.
The Daily Caller revealed Rafia Farook’s membership in the ICNA, “Shooter’s Mother Active In US Branch Of Pro-Caliphate Islamic Group:”
Rafia Farook, the mother of San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook, is an active member of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), a Muslim organization that promotes the establishment of a caliphate and has ties to a radical Pakistani political group called Jamaat-e-Islami. Farook’s affiliation with ICNA was revealed on Friday when MSNBC and other new outlets scoured the Farooks’ apartment in Redlands, Cal. An MSNBC reporter found a certificate of appreciation presented to Safia Farook last summer by ICNA’s sisters’ wing.
The terrorism track record of the ICNA members and ties to a Muslim U.S. Congressman:
Though ICNA has not been named as a target in the ongoing investigation into Wednesday’s attack, the group has been associated with many others who have engaged in terrorism or plotted to do so.
Al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki has spoken at the group’s events. He spoke at an ICNA event in Baltimore in 2002, though the group has said that al-Awlaki was not radicalized at that time. Al-Awlaki exchanged emails with Nidal Hasan, the Army major who killed 13 people in a terrorist attack at Fort Hood in Nov. 2009. Al-Awlaki was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2011 in Yemen.
Another ICNA member was indicted in April on federal terrorism charges. Noelle Valentzas and another woman were charged with plotting an attack on New York City similar to the attacks at the Boston Marathon.
As The Daily Caller uncovered at the time, Velentzas gave presentations at least two ICNA events in recent years. One of those, ICNA’s 2012 annual convention, was also attended by Indiana Rep. Andre Carson, one of two Muslims in the House of Representatives. (RELATED: One of theWomen Who Plotted NYC Attack Had Ties to U.S. Islamic Group)
And in 2009, five American students who knew each other from an ICNA mosque in Alexandria, Va. were arrested in Pakistan and charged with plotting to attack American troops in Afghanistan.
Founded in 1968 and is based in Jamaica, N.Y., ICNA is considered one of the more conservative Islamic umbrella organizations operating in the U.S. Unlike other groups like the Islamic Society of North America or the Council on American-Islamic Relations, ICNA segregates men and women at its events, a practice endorsed in the Farook household.
The ICNA is heavily influenced by the Islamist doctrine of Abul A’la Maududi:
ICNA is heavily reliant on the teachings of Abul A’la Maududi, the controversial Islamist founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, a political party operating in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh whose goal is to establish an Islamic state, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
As the ADL notes, an article in ICNA’s “The Message” stated that “using the organizational development methodology of Maulana Mawdudi and the Jamaat Al-Islami of Pakistan, which lays special emphasis on spiritual development, ICNA has developed a strong foundation.”
Maududi “is a jihadi ideologue,” according to the ADL. “He has written that ‘the nation of Jews will be exterminated’ in the end of days.”
In one of his numerous books, Maududi wrote that devout Muslims “would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge [non-Muslims] from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life.”
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EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.