The mother of one of the two shooters in the 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack was sentenced to six months of home confinement and three years of probation on Thursday, Feb. 11, for shredding the document that her son had drawn up as a roadmap for the siege that killed 14 people and wounded 22 others.
Rafia Sultana Shareef, 67, of Corona, also known as Rafia Farook, pleaded guilty in March to one count of destroying evidence, a felony that could have left her serving up to 20 years in federal prison. But under a plea agreement, she faced at most 18 months in custody when sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Jesus G. Bernal in Riverside.
Before she was sentenced, Shareef apologized to the handful of victims and survivors of the attack by her son and daughter-in-law who were in attendance.
“I pray for each of your family members,” she said, looking directly at the gallery.
Shareef, reading from a statement, then pivoted and apologized to the judge for her crime: “I am sorry for what I did.” She referenced a tenet of her Islamic faith that receiving punishment now will relieve her of the burden of her acts in the afterlife.
Shareef’s attorney, Charles D. Swift, had sought six months of home confinement followed by two years of probation. He told Bernal that Shareef had acted on “the spur of the moment,” out of a parent’s instinct to protect a child and that she was unlikely to re-offend.
“It’s criminal. But it’s also momentarily understandable,” Swift said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Julius Nam asked for nine months in prison and three years of probation.
“This is not a typical obstruction of justice case,” Nam told Bernal. “The defendant chose to deliberately destroy a document that was central to the understanding of the planning.”
Bernal struggled with his sentencing decision right up to announcing it, saying it was “borderline” whether Shareef should be locked up. Ultimately, he chose house arrest, citing Shareef’s age, health and the physical and mental abuse she had suffered in what he said was an arranged marriage.
“We must keep in mind that it was her son, and maybe she acted instinctively to protect him,” Bernal said.
Some family members of the victims were livid. Gregory Clayborn, whose daughter Sierra was killed, cursed as he exited the courtroom.
Rosa Ortiz, whose nephew Kevin Ortiz survived several gunshot wounds, said she was disappointed that Shareef didn’t receive prison time. Ortiz then confronted Shareef as Shareef waited for an elevator after the hearing.
“I hope you live with your guilt the rest of your life. You’re a terrible mother!” Ortiz shouted.
Outside court, Swift acknowledged that the community at large also would likely be disappointed with the sentence.
“They are looking for a vessel for that grief,” he said. “But Mrs. Shareef isn’t a vessel for that grief.”
The FBI became aware of what prosecutors call “the attack plan” a few years after the shooting while interviewing family members. It was largely reassembled from the thin paper strips into a readable form.
The plan listed tasks to be completed in the week before the shooting, such as destroying electronics that authorities could use to track the killers, and buying parts to help make IEDs. Many of the tasks were completed.
The document also included a diagram of the conference room and a suggested path for the shooters through the tables; it is unclear whether that route was used.
Shareef is the only person prosecuted for committing a crime directly related to the Dec. 2, 2015, attack on a gathering of about 80 people at a San Bernardino Division of Environmental Health holiday party and training session at the Inland Regional Center.
Hours after the attack, her youngest son, Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, both radicalized Muslims, died in a gun battle with law enforcement.
Rizwan Farook’s longtime friend Enrique Marquez Jr. was sentenced to 20 years in prison for supplying the automatic weapons the couple used. But Marquez had purchased the firearms for an aborted attack years earlier, prosecutors have said, and he had drifted apart from Farook.
Prosecutors have not accused Shareef of knowing about the attack in advance, even though she shared the couple’s Redlands townhome.
They said Shareef shredded what she believed was a map showing an escape route to Big Bear. Investigators did not seize the shredder when they searched the home. Her son Syed Raheel Farook took it with him to his Corona home and kept the contents.
Outside court Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Grigg for the first time explained how the plan was reassembled. The FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, matched some strips by hand and used a computer and scanner to match the ripped, jagged edges like a jigsaw puzzle.
But he said a mystery still remains:
Exactly why Farook and Malik committed the massacre.
“We’ll never know,” Grigg said.
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