The friend of the male shooter in the early December shooting massacre in San Bernardino was indicted Wednesday on terror charges.
The charges against Enrique Marquez, Jr., 24, include conspiring in a pair of previous planned terror attacks and making false statements when he bought the guns used in the Dec. 2 shooting that left 14 people dead.
The federal grand jury indictment avoids the need for a probable cause hearing before a judge to determine if Marquez should stand trial on the five counts.
If convicted, he could go to prison for 50 years, according to the Associated Press.
“Mr. Marquez is charged for his role in a conspiracy several years ago to target innocent civilians in our own backyard with cold-blooded terror attacks, and with providing weapons to an individual whose endgame was murder,” David Bowdich, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, said in a statement.
Other counts against Marquez include conspiring with the shooter Syed Farook to carry out various terror attacks with pipe bombs and guns in 2011 and 2012; those plots fizzled and the two men never acted. The two other counts accuse Marquez of immigration fraud for a sham marriage with a Russian woman who was the sister-in-law of Farook’s older brother.
Marquez has already been charged with the crimes in a criminal complaint filed Dec. 17 before the charges were taken to the federal grand jury.
He has not yet entered a plea, but expected to do so at his Jan. 6 arraignment. He is being held without bail.
The Dec. 2 shooting at a conference room in the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, Calif., left 14 people dead and 22 others injured. The shooters, Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were killed in a gun battle with authorities hours later.
