San Bernardino shooters buried during guarded funeral in Southern California


On Tuesday, the shooters behind the Dec. 2 terrorist attack in San Bernardino that killed 14 people were buried in an unidentified cemetery somewhere in Southern California.
About 10 people showed up for the burial, and most were relatives of Syed Farook. An attendee, who asked to remain anonymous, told Reuters that most members of the mosque Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, attended refused to come to the graveside funeral, which was guarded by FBI agents. The attendee said the burial took place at a cemetery hours away from San Bernardino and adhered to Islamic rules. Law enforcement officials released the bodies last week, but it took a week to find a cemetery willing to accept them, the attendee said. One member of their mosque, who asked not to be named, told Reuters he didn't go to the burial because "I don't forgive him myself. I pray mercy for him, and we Muslims know God is merciful. But he's also just."
While attorneys for Farook's family confirmed to NBC News that Farook and Malik were buried in Southern California, they did not say where. The Islamic Cemetery & Masjid in Adelanto, about an hour away from San Bernardino, told Reuters that it was approached about burying the bodies, but refused. It's not unusual for cemeteries to not want to accept the bodies of people accused of terrorism; in 2013, the family of Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev could not find a cemetery in Massachusetts willing to bury him, and he eventually was buried in an unmarked grave in Virginia.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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