India contradicts Saudi claims about visit of Tashfeen while Saudi Arabia denies her schooling in Kingdom. Tashfeen Malik never visited India, says Indian Home Ministry
Lahore, Pakistan: The story of suspect terrorist Tashfeen Malik has become more complicated after Saudi Interior Ministry claims that Tashfeen was not residing in Saudi Arabia and she visited India in 2013 but Indian Home Ministry has categorically denied this claim while Pakistan Interior ministry is quite and did not contradict Saudi claims that she was not living in Saudi Arabia.
If she was not living in Saudi Arabia and visited only twice as mentioned by Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki, then from where she completed her school and college education?—Pakistan or somewhere else?
Saudi records show she was not a resident of Saudi Arabia and had been to the kingdom only twice in her life —- once in 2008 for several weeks and the second time in 2013 for four months.
The Indian Home Ministry contradicts Saudi claims that Tashfeen visited India. Indian Express in its story said that intelligence agencies went back to old immigration records to determine whether Tashfeen Malik, the Pakistani woman suspect in the mass shooting in California’s San Bernardino, visited India in 2013, a year before she went to the US with her husband. According to Home Ministry, no official record of Malik’s visit to India was found.
Indian Home Ministry started inquires after the New York Times (NYT) quoted a Saudi Interior Ministry spokesperson as saying that Malik left Saudi Arabia for India in October 2013. As per the report, Maj Gen Mansour Turki told NYT via text message on Saturday that Malik visited the kingdom twice. In 2008, she arrived in June from Pakistan to visit her father and stayed for about nine weeks before returning to Pakistan, the report quoted Turki as saying.
“Then, in 2013, she arrived on June 8 from Pakistan and departed for India on Oct 6…,” it added.
Relatives of Tashfeen Malik also claim that she had grown up in Saudi Arabia. They said she had grown up there, and they attributed her adoption of a strict, conservative interpretation of Islam.
According to family, Tashfeen stayed in Pakistan during 2007 to 2012 and studied in Multan. She obtained her place as a pharmacy student at Bahauddin Zakariya University under a quota system that reserves spots for the children of expatriate Pakistanis — suggesting that she had indeed grown up abroad.
The brother of Tashfeen while talking to the Wall Street Journal said that Tashfeen lived in Saudi Arabia and he still lives in Riyadh.
General Turki also said there was “no evidence” that Ms. Malik had met her husband in the kingdom, but they were in Saudi Arabia at the same time for about five days in October 2013, according to information General Turki provided.
On the other hand, investigators believe that Farook visited Saudi Arabia twice, once for the hajj pilgrimage between Oct. 1 and Oct. 20, 2013, and once for an off-season pilgrimage known as Umrah for nine days in July 2014 and the couple flew to the United States together from Jidda in July 2014. And members of a mosque the couple attended in California said they had been married in Saudi Arabia.
NYT reports that the Saudi narrative has varied to the extent that one official denied she had ever been there (Saudi Arabia).
The day after the attack, Osama Nugali, a spokesman for the Saudi Foreign Ministry, said via text message to NYT that Mr. Farook had visited the kingdom only once, for nine days in 2014. He said he had no record of Ms. Malik having ever entered the kingdom.
“For the lady, we don’t have a record of this name,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, Pakistani authorities did not respond to claims of Saudi Arabia that she was not residing in Saudi Arabia and only twice she visited Kingdom.
