FBI agents on Thursday were searching the California townhome of the brother of one of the shooters in the San Bernardino terror attack. The brother is a Navy veteran who earned medals for fighting global terrorism.
Agents were carrying out a search warrant as part of an ongoing investigation, FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller confirmed. No arrests had been made.
Eimiller declined, however, to comment on where the search was happening or whether it had anything to do with the deadly shooting. An affidavit in support of the warrant was under seal.
Gunman Syed Farook’s brother and sister-in-law live in a home in Corona.
Farook and his wife killed 14 people in the Dec. 2 terror attack at a meeting of his coworkers in San Bernardino, about an hour east of Los Angeles.
Farook’s brother, Syed Raheel Farook, is a Navy veteran who earned medals for fighting global terrorism.
Syed Raheel Farook was in the Navy from 2003 to 2007, military records show. During his stint, he received the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, among other awards.
After going through training in the family’s native Illinois, Syed Raheel Farook served for three years aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise as an information system technician.
The search warrant came a day after Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company would fight federal government efforts to help the FBI hack into an iPhone that had been used by shooter Syed Farook.
A federal magistrate ordered Apple to help the FBI get into the phone but Cook said doing so would the software would mean building a “backdoor” that would bypass digital locks protecting consumer information on iPhones. He says the software would be too dangerous to create.
(AP)