Family members of three victims of the December 2015 shooting rampage in San Bernardino, California, have sued Facebook, Google and Twitter, claiming that the tech giants permitted Islamic State to flourish on social media.

The plaintiffs assert that by allowing Islamic State militants to spread propaganda freely on social media, the three companies provided “material support” to the group and enabled attacks such as the one in San Bernardino.

“For years defendants have knowingly and recklessly provided the terrorist group ISIS with accounts to use its social networks as a tool for spreading extremist propaganda, raising funds and attracting new recruits,” family members of Sierra Clayborn, Tin Nguyen and Nicholas Thalasinos charge in the 32-page complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

“Without defendants Twitter, Facebook and Google (YouTube), the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible,” the plaintiffs say.

A spokeswoman for Twitter declined to comment on the lawsuit. Representatives for Facebook and Google could not immediately be reached by Reuters on Thursday afternoon.

Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on a holiday gathering of Farook’s co-workers at a government building in San Bernardino on Dec. 2, 2015, killing 14 people and wounding 22 others.

Farook, the 28-year-old, U.S.-born son of Pakistani immigrants, and Malik, 29, a Pakistani native, died in a shootout with police four hours after the massacre.

Authorities have said the couple was inspired by Islamist militants. At the time, the assault ranked as the deadliest attack by Islamist extremists on U.S. soil since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

In June 2016, an American-born gunman pledging allegiance to the leader of Islamic State shot 49 people to death at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, before he was killed by police.

In December 2016 the families of three men killed at the nightclub sued Twitter, Google and Facebook in federal court on allegations similar to those in the most recent lawsuit.

U.S. federal law gives internet companies broad immunity from liability for content posted by their users. A number of lawsuits have been filed in recent years seeking to hold social media companies responsible for terror attacks, but none has advanced beyond the preliminary phases. (Reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by David Ingram and Julia Love in San Francisco; Editing by Dan Grebler)

Relatives of Tashfeen Malik, the woman involved in what has been classified as a terrorist attack in the United States, have said that she became more hardline after her time in Saudi Arabia. Her hardline views, according to them, were developed when she lived in the country.

Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik died in a shoot-out after killing 14 people in San Bernardino in California. Within the last 48 hours, the terror group IS has claimed the couple as their followers though investigators have suggested that there were no external links to the couple and that the plot to kill had been concocted by the couple themselves.

 Malik’s Pakistani relatives have suggested that her father cut off contact with his family in Pakistan due to a feud over inheritance and he moved to Saudi Arabia when his daughter was very young.

Reuters has noted that school teacher, Hifza Bibi, the step-sister of Malik’s father who lives in the Punjab said:

“From what we have heard, they lived differently, their mindset is different. We are from a land of Sufi saints and this is very shocking for us.”

Time in Pakistan

Ms Malik, 29, returned from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan and studied pharmacy at the Bahauddin Zakaria university in Multan from 2007 to 2012. Pictures of her Pakistani identity card have been circulated on social media after the killings.

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