The area in Punjab where she spent her early years and later went to university is a “recruitment ground” and stronghold of Islamist groups with ties to al Qaeda, said Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States. Among the militant groups with a presence there is Lashkar-e-Taiba, which has been blamed for the November 2008 killing spree in the Indian financial capital of Mumbai.

“Our brother changed a lot since he went to Saudi,” Malik’s uncle, Javed Rabbani, said of Malik’s father. “When relatives visited him, they would come back and tell us how conservative and hardline he had become,” he said in an interview with Reuters.

A source close to the Saudi government said that during Malik’s time in Saudi Arabia nothing came to authorities’ attention there that suggested she was involved with radical Islamic groups. Malik was not on any Saudi law enforcement or intelligence watchlist, the source said.