Friend who supplied rifles to San Bernardino terrorists agrees to plead guilty
The man accused of buying two rifles used in the 2015 San Bernardino terror attacks has agreed to plead guilty in connection with the purchase of the weapons as well as an aborted plot to open fire on the 91 Freeway and the campus of a Riverside college, according to court documents filed Tuesday.
Enrique Marquez Jr., a friend of gunman Syed Rizwan Farook, was arrested shortly after the Dec. 2, 2015, attacks that left 14 dead and 22 wounded.
While he was not accused of taking part in the shooting, Marquez, 25, emerged as a central figure in the investigation after federal agents began to probe his ties to Farook.
The onetime neighbors had been close friends and began attending a mosque together in 2010. Even as Marquez told friends he hoped to enlist in the U.S. Navy, prosecutors say, he and Farook were secretly amassing weapons, discussing radical Islam and plotting terrorist attacks in California.
Marquez is expected to formally plead guilty Thursday morning, officials said.
According to court records, Marquez and Farook had plotted to launch attacks on the 91 Freeway in Corona and at Riverside City College in 2011 and 2012, but both plots were aborted, records show.
The charges Marquez will plead guilty to involved conspiring to take part in those aborted attacks, not the shootings at the Inland Regional Center. According to the plea agreement, Marquez told investigators he knew nothing of the planned attack at the center and had “withdrawn” from Farook in late 2012.
Under the terms of the deal, Marquez agreed to plead guilty to the two most serious charges: conspiracy to lend material support to a terrorist and making false statements in connection with the purchase of a firearm.
In exchange for the pleas, prosecutors will request that the judge grant Marquez some leniency when deciding his punishment. The maximum sentence allowed for the two charges is 25 years in prison. The government will also dismiss two fraud charges against Marquez that stemmed from his bogus marriage to a Russian woman.
According to court records, the two men first met in 2005 when Marquez moved next door to Farook in Riverside and eventually struck a plan to attack Riverside Community College and rush-hour drivers on the busy freeway that bisects the county.
They decided to target the college first because both had been enrolled there as students and were familiar with the campus, the agreement said. They drew up plans to hurl pipe bombs onto a cafeteria from the floor above and identified the escape route they would use to carry out more attacks elsewhere on the school grounds, Marquez admitted in the agreement.
After attacking the school, the agreement said, Marquez and Farook planned to lay siege to a stretch of the Riverside Freeway with no exits from which motorists could escape.
Marquez acknowledged the plan called for him to hike into the hills overlooking the freeway and fire on people as Farook throw pipe bombs from the side of the road and then shoot people at close range.
Marquez also agreed that he lied when he bought two rifles in late 2011 and early 2012 and claimed in required registration papers that the weapons were for himself. In reality, the rifles were for Farook, who had given money to Marquez for the purchases, the plea agreement said.
The men believed Marquez could buy the rifles “more easily than Rizwan and would receive less scrutiny than Rizwan,” prosecutors wrote in the plea deal.
The agreement also detailed discussions the men had about making improvised explosive devices for their planned attacks. Marquez acknowledged consulting Inspire, an online Englishlanguage magazine published by Al Qaeda, for guidance on how to build the bombs. He and Farook spoke about using radio and remote-controlled devices to detonate the bombs, and Marquez purchased Christmas tree lights that could be used to ignite explosives.
Hours after the 2105 terror attack, Marquez called 911 to say that Farook had used weapons that Marquez had purchased. He also posted a cryptic apology on his personal Facebook page on the day of the attack, before going to an emergency room and then being sent to a mental health institution.
“I’m. Very sorry sguys (sic),” Marquez’s post read. “It was a pleasure.”
Marquez waived his right to an attorney and voluntarily spoke with federal agents in the weeks following the shootings.
In the wake of the attack, friends described Marquez as a shy cycling enthusiast who often seemed saddened by the circumstances of his marriage to Maria Chernykh, whose sister was married to Syed Raheel Farook, the shooter’s older brother.
Raheel Farook, Chernykh and her sister Tatiana Farook all pleaded guilty earlier this year to helping arrange a sham marriage between Chernykh and Marquez. The marriage plot was uncovered during the FBI’s sprawling investigation of the shootings.
U.S. Atty. Eileen M. Decker said in a statement that although the plans to launch attacks in 2011 and 2012 never took place, “they clearly laid the foundation” for the 2015 rampage.
Marquez’s court-appointed attorneys did not immediately return calls for comment.
In exchange for the guilty pleas, the government agreed to dismiss the other charges against Marquez, although the judge can consider dismissed charges when deciding on a sentence.
Farook, who worked for the San Bernardino County health department, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were killed in a gun battle with police hours after the Dec. 2, 2015, attacks.
Hal Houser, who survived the attack, said he has always considered Marquez to be an ancillary figure in the case. Despite the guilty plea, Houser said he is still left with many unanswered questions about the shooting, including what motivated the assailants and who else may have known about their plans. He still asks, “Why us?”
“Marquez never engendered my deepest animus,” Houser said. “He is just the only face I can tack to the dartboard.”
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UPDATES:
4:50 p.m.: This story was updated with additional information from the plea agreement and quotes from a survivor.
3:50 p.m.: This story was updated with additional background about Marquez and the 2015 attacks.
This article was originally published at 2:50 p.m.
