Death sentence? The FDLE Report

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is supposed to be in the business of saving lives.  Yet, a just-released report by FDLE investigators may prove to be a death sentence. 

At risk is the life of Rifqa Bary, the seventeen-year-old girl who fled to Florida in July to escape her family and the virulent Muslim community near Columbus, Ohio of which they have been a part since immigrating from Sri Lanka.  Rifqa says that her father had threatened to kill when he discovered that she had secretly converted to Christianity several years ago.  That would make her, according to the comprehensive theo-political-legal program authoritative Islam calls Shariah, guilty of "apostasy" – a capital offense.   

For Shariah-adherent Muslims, such an offense is a stain on the family’s honor and it often falls to fathers or brothers to remove it by the execution of the offender.  It is this possibility that the FDLE was asked by a juvenile court judge in Florida to assess before he ruled on the motions filed by Ms. Bary’s parents to compel her return to Ohio.  

Unfortunately, the Florida investigators failed to perform their assignment.  They found "no conclusive reports of threats" against Rifqa Bary.  At best, their report is incomplete.  At worst, it is misleading, possibly fatally so. 

The FDLE concluded that "our investigation has provided no clear evidence of criminal activity in other states [i.e., Ohio] which may be supportive of [Ms. Bary’s] allegations."  This finding could only have been reached by a lack of due-diligence.  For example, the investigators evidently failed to pursue the following leads: 

• A Rifqa Bary Facebook site with 123 members that claims as its mission "we must kill her" was not considered evidence of potential criminal activity.

• The Shariah-adherent Muslim community near Columbus and its toxic Noor Islamic Cultural Center were not investigated.  The FDLE report says that "an investigation into any person, religious or social organization without a specific criminal predicate in inappropriate."  This is all the more stunning given that Rifqa’s attorney, John Stemberger, has introduced into evidence a 35-page document revealing the mosque’s extensive ties to jihadism and terrorism.

• The FDLE did not interview many of the friends Rifqa had identified who had knowledge of the abuse to which she had long been subjected at the hands of family members.  The FDLE evidently spoke to just three individuals from the list and dispensed with the rest.

• There was nothing remotely like a rigorous effort to establish the degree to which Shariah requires its adherents to murder apostates like Rifqa Bary or the extent to which honor killings have been occurring in Western states – including, of late, the U.S. – to carry out this obligation. 

Without such relevant information, the presiding Juvenile Court judge, Daniel Dawson, is – to put it mildly – clearly at an extreme disadvantage in deciding whether Ms. Bary can safely be sent back to her family and/or community.   

The extent to which this denial of material facts is not just an omission but dereliction of duty on the part of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is suggested by the outrageous double-standard its investigators reportedly applied as they conducted interviews with the prospective victim and her family. 

My Pet Jawa, a blog that has been doggedly and carefully following the Rifqa Bary case, broke the story that the FDLE report included the following admission:

FDLE/DCF Investigators were accompanied to the Bary residence by Sgt. John Hurst of the Columbus P.D. Child Abuse Squad. The residence is located in an apartment complex. Mr. Babak Darvish, Executive Director of the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Columbus and Mr. Romin Iqbal, Staff Attorney for CAIR OHIO were present.  Investigators interviewed Mr. Bary in a non-custodial setting. (Emphasis added.)

As My Pet Jawa observed:

What makes this decision by FDLE and the Florida Dept of Children and Families to allow CAIR – who is not a party to the legal dispute and has not notified the court that they are representing the Barys in any legal capacity – [reprehensible] is that FDLE/DCF conducted a three and a half hour interrogation of Rifqa, the victim in this case, without her attorney and guardian ad litem being present. (Emphasis in the original.)

The inclusion of CAIR representatives in such a proceeding would be all the more outrageous in light of the fact that CAIR is a Muslim Brotherhood-associated organization.  The Brotherhood has the explicit goal of "destroying Western civilization from within" and making America into a Shariah-adherent Islamic nation.  CAIR was also an unindicted co-conspirator in a case involving material support for the terrorist organization Hamas. 

Taken together, the FDLE’s conduct suggests that its personnel deliberately conducted an investigation that is both incomplete and misleading.  We can only speculate as to why.  But the possibility that Governor Charlie Crist would like this hot potato transferred to Ohio rather than have it complicate his run for the Senate may be a contributing factor. 

What is clear is this:  If the minor in question were fleeing parents who she believed wanted to kill her for reasons other than Islam’s Shariah, it is hard to imagine that the system in Florida ostensibly charged with protecting such children would even contemplate restoring parental custody.   

Should such a restoration take place in this case, it will be further evidence that America is succumbing to the stealth jihad that is inexorably insinuating that seditious Islamic program into our society, in Florida and elsewhere across this country.  In that event, the result of failing to fight the Islamists in this case may prove to be not just a death sentence for Rifqa Bary.  It could turn out as well to be an important milestone in the submission of all Americans to the program that explicitly seeks to replace our Constitution and the liberties it enshrines with the brutal and repressive program known as Shariah.  

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and host of the nationally syndicated program Secure Freedom Radio.