Three people associated with the Dec. 2 San Bernardino Islamic terror attackers were arrested on Thursday on charges of conspiracy, immigration fraud, and making false statements to authorities.
Syed Raheel Farook, 31, is the brother of San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook who died hours after the December attack in a shootout with police.
Raheel Farook is married to Tatiana Farook, who is also named in the indictment.
Tatiana Farook’s sister, Mariya Chernykh, is the third person named in the indictment. Chernykh is married to Muslim convert Enrique Marquez who was indicted in December for conspiring with Rizwan Farook in 2011 and 2012 to provide material support to terrorists.
The Wednesday indictment “charges all three defendants in a conspiracy to knowingly make under oath a false statement with respect to a material fact in an application, affidavit, and other document required by the immigration laws and regulations of the United States,” according to a Department of Justice release.
Tatiana and Mariya Chernykh are sisters and are immigrants from Russia.
Terrorist Tashfeen Malik entered the United States in 2014 on a K-1 finance visa. She and husband Rizwan Farook married, had a child and carried out the Dec. 2 Islamic terror attack that left 14 dead and more than 20 injured.
Serious questions have arisen concerning the vetting of Malik before she entered the U.S. U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) said in a December statement, “After reviewing Tashfeen Malik’s immigration file, it is clear that immigration officials did not thoroughly vet her application.” It is not clear whether Malik and Rizwan Farook had even met before she entered the U.S. on the finance visa.
Malik had made statements online in 2012 and 2014 pledging support for and hope to join in the fight for Islamic jihad. These messages were not included in the file documenting the vetting of Malik.
Muslim convert Enrique Marquez was charged last December for conspiring to provide material support — himself, a firearm, and an explosive — toward crimes of terrorism; lying in connection with the purchase of firearms, and immigration fraud for a sham marriage with a member of Farook’s family as Breitbart News previously reported.
Marquez told authorities that he conspired with Rizwan Farook in 2011 and 2012 to carry out maximum casualty attacks with Rizwan Farook at a school cafeteria and a local freeway.
A terminated investigation into Tablighi Jamaat mosques could have prevented the December 2 attacks according to Department of Homeland Security whistleblower Philip Haney who told Breitbart News just over a week after the attacks, “Civil Rights and Civil Liberties shut the case down because we were focusing on individuals who belong to Tablighi Jamaat.”
Rizwan Farook attended the Dar al Uloom Al Islamiyah mosque in the San Bernardino area which is believed to harbor Tablighi Jamaat fundamentalists. The sect is known as the “Army of Darkness” in some circles.
Haney told Breitbart News in the December radio interview, “Tablighi Jamaat members under the organization structure of the Deoband movement – a Salafi Islamic group – were coming to America, going to mosques all over the country, at the invitation of imams and leaders who where already known to be linked to terrorism.”
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