Enrique Marquez Jr., the former neighbor charged with assisting the San Bernardino, California, shooters, admitted on Facebook a month before the shootings that he was involved in terrorism and might go to prison, according to federal court documents revealed Thursday.
Marquez, 24, was charged in a three-count indictment Thursday with buying the rifles used in the Dec. 2 assault — which killed 14 people at the Inland Resource Center — plotting other terrorist attacks with gunman Syed Rizwan Farook in 2011 and 2012, and negotiating a sham marriage to a distant relative of Farook’s.
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Federal prosecutors said there was no evidence that Marquez took part in or knew about the resource center attack. But they said he’d been plotting with Farook to carry out attacks on Riverside Community College and a Southern California freeway as early as 2011.
In an FBI affidavit accompanying the indictment, investigators said Marquez hinted at his involvement with Farook in a post on his verified Facebook account on Nov. 5 — almost a full month before the massacre.
“No one knows really knows me, I lead multiple lives and I’m wondering when its all going to collapse on M[e],” he wrote, according to the FBI.
An unidentified Facebook user engaged with Marquez, observing: “I think everyone leads multiple lives.”
To which Marquez responded: “Involved in terrorist plots, drugs, antisocial behavior, marriage, might go to prison for fraud, etc.”
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The question of whether Farook and his wife and accomplice, Tashfeen Malik, posted about their plans to social media before Malik came to the United States has created controversy. Critics of U.S. immigration policy have alleged that the United States might have been able to stop the attack had they tracked the couple’s accounts.
FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday that Farook and Malik didn’t post any public jihadist messages on Facebook before Malik entered the country. The affidavit discloses, however, that Malik may have posted such sentiments publicly on the actual day of the shootings. The FBI said that on Dec. 2, a post appeared on an account associated with Malik reading: “We pledge allegiance to Khalifa bu bkr al baghdadi al quraishi.” The agency said it believed the post referred to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — the leader of ISIS. It is time-stamped 11:14 a.m. (2:14 p.m. ET) — just minutes before Farook and Malik stormed the Inland Resource Center. This article first appeared on NBCNews.com.
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