“Those questions are still lingering,” Eimiller said. The FBI has not ruled out that someone other than the dead couple knew about or helped plan the attack. Syed Rizwan Farook was a county health inspector who targeted his co-workers at an annual training session in what became the deadliest terror strike on U.S. That search warrant was sealed, and it wasn’t immediately clear if it was connected to Thursday’s arrests. In February, FBI agents spent hours searching his home in the Southern California city of Corona, carting out armloads of thick manila envelopes, a computer tower and an unidentifiable object so heavy it took two men to carry. Syed Raheel Farook, the shooter’s older brother, earned two medals for fighting global terrorism for serving in the Navy from 2003 to 2007. Marquez is charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists by buying the assault rifles used in the massacre, making false statements about when he bought the weapons, and conspiring with Syed Rizwan Farook on a pair of previously planned attacks that were never carried out. Tatiana Farook also accompanied her sister to buy a $50 wedding ring, and Marquez and Chernykh posed in photographs that were staged to make the marriage appear real, prosecutors said.Īll the while, Marquez was living with his mother next door to the house where the Farook brothers grew up, and Chernykh was living in a different city with her boyfriend, also the father of her child, according to the criminal complaint against Marquez. “It’s a mechanism for both the government and the defense lawyers to use to better their position - with the government trying to get information relative to terrorism, and the defense looking to resolve the matter without prison time,” he said.Īccording to an indictment unsealed Thursday, Syed Raheel and Tatiana Farook participated in the sham by acting as witnesses to the union of her sister and Marquez, and by creating a joint checking account along with a backdated lease to make it appear as if all four of them lived together. While the government can benefit from continued interviews with the trio, Wedick said they also stand to benefit. “If they were cooperating, they’d probably make some kind of deal.” “It suggests to me they weren’t talking so the government decided to ask a grand jury to return charges,” Wedick said. The government may have brought the charges as a bargaining chip in order to get more information that the Farooks and Chernykh haven’t shared, said James Wedick, a former FBI agent who was with the agency 35 years. Chernykh also is charged with fraud, misuse of visas and other documents, perjury and two counts of making false statements, which could mean up to 25 years in prison. The redactions were extensive, including the blacking out of the date on which the FBI got the internal green-light to proceed with the contract and clean air and water certifications filled out by the contractor and others.If convicted of conspiracy to make false statements on federal immigration documents, the Farooks and Chernykh face up to five years in prison. The documents did show that after the FBI’s clash with Apple became public, at least three other companies expressed interest in cracking the phone, even though none of them had by that point started developing a tool that would have allowed them to do so. FBI Director James Comey intimated during a public forum last year that the price was more than $1 million.Īpple v FBI timeline: 43 days that rocked tech The FBI indicated in the records that both of those details are classified. It ended when the FBI said an “outside party” had cracked the phone without Apple’s help.įriday's data release included dozens of pages of contracting boilerplate but no information about the source of the exploit or its cost. The dispute roiled the tech industry and prompted a fierce debate about the extent of the government’s power to pry into digital communications. The Justice Department spent more than a month last year in a legal battle with Apple over whether it could legally force the tech giant to help agents bypass the security feature on Farook's phone.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |