Animal Rights Activist Wanted by FBI for Bay Area Bombings Is Arrested After 2 Decades

An alleged animal rights extremist who had been wanted for more than two decades in connection with a pair of Bay Area bombings was arrested in Wales, the FBI said Tuesday.

Daniel San Diego, 46, was arrested Monday by United Kingdom authorities in coordination with the FBI, the agency said.

He is accused of setting off bombs in 2003 at two East Bay companies with connections to Huntingdon Life Sciences, a New Jersey-based laboratory that had drawn intense criticism for its animal testing practices and alleged animal abuse. Nobody was injured in either bombing.

“San Diego’s arrest demonstrates the FBI’s unwavering commitment to bringing criminals to justice, regardless of how far they flee or how much time passes,” Robert Tripp, the FBI’s special agent in charge of its San Francisco field office, said in a statement.

San Diego had been on the FBI’s list of its most wanted terror suspects since 2009, marking the first time the agency listed someone for an alleged act of domestic terrorism. In doing so, the FBI said agents believed San Diego had “set an example to other extremists in the animal rights movement,” noting the 2008 firebombing of the homes of two UC Santa Cruz research scientists.

At the time, some animal welfare activists decried the inclusion of San Diego on a list alongside people accused of deadly terror attacks across the globe.

The first East Bay bombing shattered windows at the Emeryville offices of biotechnology company Chiron Inc., according to the FBI. One pipe bomb detonated early the morning of Aug. 28, 2003, followed by a second about an hour later, which agents believed was timed to kill or injure first responders, though the area was cleared before it went off.

Less than a month later, another bomb — this one wrapped in nails — detonated at the Pleasanton headquarters of Shaklee Corp., a manufacturer of nutritional supplements. Again, nobody was injured.

San Diego was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2004. He was born in Berkeley and grew up in San Rafael, and at the time of the bombings, he was living in the Sonoma County community of Schellville, where he had been trying to launch a vegan bakery, according to the FBI.

He “expressed extreme views advocating the use of violence to achieve the goals of the [animal rights] movement,” the FBI said when it added him to its most wanted list, and he was thought to have ties to the Animal Liberation Brigade — part of a leaderless anarchist movement that advocated for direct action against animal abusers and drew heightened attention from federal authorities in the 2000s.

A representative for the FBI’s San Francisco office did not provide further details on San Diego’s arrest, including when he could be extradited to the U.S. to face charges.