FBI searches Salt Lake City home of animal rights supporter

Updated: 03/16/2010

The FBI served a search warrant Monday on a Salt Lake City home occupied by a supporter of the Animal Liberation Front.

Peter D. Young, 32, said at least eight FBI agents arrived about 11:30 a.m. The agents took computers, papers and other items it thought to be related to "animal enterprise terrorism," Young said, reciting language from the warrant.

"It's important to highlight the fact that I am being targeted just because I am a public figure on the subject" of animal rights, Young said in an interview Tuesday.

A federal judge in Iowa issued the warrant. Law enforcement there has a long-running investigating into animal releases at a University of Iowa laboratory.

Young, who served two years in prison for releasing minks from farms in Wisconsin, said he has had nothing to do with releases in Iowa.

"The lawyers are as baffled as I am," Young said. "Every indication is they [the FBI] are just on a fishing expedition right now."

A spokeswoman for the FBI in Salt Lake City, Debbie Dujanovic Bertram, confirmed agents from Salt Lake City and Iowa participated in the raid but declined to elaborate.

"All I can say is it's connected to a case in Iowa," Bertram said.

The search warrant named Young and the co-defendant in his conviction from Wisconsin. Young said that co-defendant informed on him and the two have had no contact since 1997.

Two other people also were named in the search warrant, but Young declined to identify them. Neither Young nor the FBI gave the address of the home, and a listed address for Young could not be located Tuesday.

ncarlisle@sltrib.com