It does not sound like a custody battle, at least not yet, but the older sister of accused San Bernardino massacre suspect Syed Farook has staked an early claim to adopting the 6-month-old girl that Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik left behind—and an Orange County organization is assisting the auntie.
Saira Khan and her mother attended an initial hearing early Monday relating to the custody of her niece, Farook and Malik's only child. By their side was Fatima Dadabhoy, an attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations – Greater Los Angeles Area office (CAIR-LA), which is in Anaheim.
“The family is naturally distraught at the separation and are eagerly awaiting to obtain custody of the 6-month-old girl,” the civil rights nonprofit states in a release. “CAIR-LA is working to make sure that the baby is placed with a Muslim foster family while she remains in the custody of San Bernardino County Child Protective Services. It is also working with the family to ensure that the child is swiftly reunited with her family.”
“For the time being, we want her to enjoy her innocence,” Saira Khan said of the child to ABC News. “You know, we don't want her to know everything, but I think eventually she will find out probably on her own.”
She also called the Dec. 2 slayings of 14 at the Inland Regional Center “horrific,” expressed sympathies to the families of victims and sounded as shocked as anyone that her brother and sister-in-law could leave their baby daughter behind.
“It’s harder for us to understand, especially knowing that he was our brother and he was so happy with her,” Saira Khan said. “How can he leave his only child, you know? And how could the mother do this?”
Khan will get a second chance to state her case for custody at a hearing scheduled for January.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.