Islamic religious defense planned in landmark Detroit genital mutilation cases. More than a year after her arrest in the nation’s first female genital cutting case, the defiant Dr. Jumana Nagarwala continues to pound away at the government for pursuing the case. She claims, among other things, that the law that’s being used to prosecute her is unconstitutional.
Doctor in genital mutilation case at war with feds https://t.co/ejhJeURB1n pic.twitter.com/06AKfiKmup
— Andrew Bostom, MD, MS (@andrewbostom) August 6, 2018
The doctor at the center of a historic genital mutilation case has another favor she’s asking of the judge: let me use the Internet.
This, on top of — please dismiss more charges against me.
More than a year after her arrest in the nation’s first female genital cutting case, the defiant Dr. Jumana Nagarwala continues to pound away at the government for pursuing the case. She claims, among other things, that the law that’s being used to prosecute her is unconstitutional, so therefore the key charges against her need to be dropped.
She’s also upset about losing certain freedoms, such as using the Internet.
This week, a judge will hold a hearing to consider her request to access the Internet, which she’s forbidden from using under the terms of her bond conditions.
Nagarwala, who is accused of cutting the genitalia of dozens of prepubescent girls and instructing members of her religious community to lie about it, has asked permission to use the Internet for 78 hours a month to watch religious live-streamed sermons. Specifically, as a member of a small Indian Muslim sect known as the Dawoodi Bohra, she wants to watch services that celebrate a nine-day holiday honoring Prophet Mohammed’s grandson.
The government says forget it, arguing there’s no way to monitor Nagarwala’s online access 78 hours a month given that the sermons she intends to watch are overseas, private and need password access. And it’s too risky to let her to do it, prosecutors argue, noting the no-Internet-access condition was set because of concerns that she is a flight risk and a danger to the community.
“(Nagarwala) is charged with participating in a 12-year conspiracy to perform FGM on countless 7-year-old girls. … (She’s) the most culpable individual on an eight-person indictment,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Woodward wrote in a Friday court filing. “Whether (she) visited other websites or accessed the internet for other purposes would be impossible to know.”
U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman will hold a hearing on Tuesday to decide the issue. Next month, he’ll conduct another hearing to decide an even bigger issue: whether to dismiss the actual genital mutilation charges against Nagarwala and her two codefendants: Dr. Fakhruddin Attar, who is accused of letting Nagarwala use his Livonia clinic to perform the procedures, and his wife Farida Attar, who allegedly held the girls’ hands during the procedures.
Read more:
Genital mutilation victims break their silence: ‘This is demonic’
Religious defense planned in landmark Detroit genital mutilation case
The defendants are challenging the 22-year-old federal law that criminalizes female genital mutilation, which has never been used before this case. The statute states: “Whoever knowingly circumcises, excises or infibulates the whole or any part of the labia majora or labia minora or clitoris of another person” under the age of 18 shall be fined or imprisoned for up to five years, or both.
Prosecutors argue Nagarwala did exactly that — with the help of the Attars — when she cut the genitals of two 7-year-old Minnesota girls who were tricked into the procedure in 2017 by their mothers and cried and bled afterward. Though prosecutors cite six victims in the indictment, including four Michigan girls, they allege Nagarwala may have subjected up to 100 girls to the procedure over a 12-year period.
Nagarwala has maintained she committed no crime, but that she engaged in a religious ritual that involved only a “shaving” or a “nick” of the genitals.
Moreover, she now claims she’s being prosecuted under a law that “Congress lacked authority to enact … thus the female genital mutilation charges must be dismissed.”
“The law was never debated on the floor of either chamber of Congress nor was there ever any legislative hearing addressing the justification or need for the federal law. Instead, all that exists is the criminal statute itself,” defense lawyers wrote in the July 27 filing, claiming the driving force behind the legislation was one lawmaker’s belief that the prohibited conduct was ‘repulsive and cruel.’ “
But the Constitution demands more than that, the defense states, arguing Congress could not have passed a female genital mutilation ban under the Commerce Clause because “notably, here, the activity being regulated has absolutely no effect on interstate commerce.”
While the indictment mentions six victims — two from Minnesota, four from Michigan — prosecutors allege Nagarwala subjected up to 100 girls to female genital cutting procedures during a 12-year conspiracy.
If convicted, Nagarwala and the Attars each face up to five years in prison on the female genital mutilation and conspiracy charges. They also face up to 20 years in prison on obstruction of justice charges, if convicted.
The most serious charge against the two doctors — conspiracy to transport a minor “with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity” — was dismissed in January. Judge Friedman agreed with the defense argument that even if female genital mutilation were proven, it would not meet the definition for “sexual activity.”
That charge carried a life sentence.
Nagarwala, the Attars and the other five defendants are all members of a small Indian Muslim sect known as the Dawoodi Bohra, which has a mosque in Farmington Hills. The sect practices female circumcision and believes it is a religious rite of passage that involves only a minor “nick.”
The other defendants include four mothers accused of subjecting their daughters to the procedure.
The case is set to go to trial in January 2019.
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Soon Michigan Will have a Jihad Supporting Doctor Like Hasan Nidal – the Fort Hood Doctor, as Governor https://tinyurl.com/yc8x7akq
If infidels don’t unite and elect his opponent.
Keith Ellison, a Farahkan follower, is now running for AG.
He wants to influence laws to be Sharia compliant.
A Muslim Governor and an AG are troubling IF people are dumb enough to elect them.
Remember also laziness, many do not bother to vote, that is how the mosque driven Muslim vote will succeed
FGM is ILLEGAL in the U.S..
We had better not bend to Muslim mutilation of girls.
BE OFFENDED MUSLIMS!
Better yet, LEAVE THE U.S.!
democRATS and their supporters have no concept what “illegal” is.
Yes, they are LAWLESS!
Except in Maine, where the state legislature has refused to pass a law against it.. By their silence and reluctance to pass that law, they’ve condoned it.
She should be given a slow drip IV filled with liquefied pork fat.
How disgusting. Yet sadly, Muslim women themselves never complain or speak out against this, all they care about is trying to win more sympathy for their religion.
There is an attitude of “I had it, my daughter also, so my granddaughter can have it”. Ignorance often called tradition is a powerful force. Peer pressure, family pressure, indoctrination from birth, subjugation. a tradition of not speaking out in public or even in the home. Most Muslim women are little better than livestock. The courage needed to speak out is enormous
she would have been a valuable asset to Mengele
and since she loves mutilating females they ought to do that to her
sans any anesthetic drug
I’ve read Bosnian muslums harvested the organs of captured Christians, which you wouldn’t think would be halal.
This is nothing more than addressing a symptom (and not even the most malevolent symptom) of the disease called islum.
100’s more victims???, more like 1000’s over 12 yrs.
Why not? The Europeans seem to be buying into sharia to replace their laws….Animals can smell fear, thus weakness…a basic tenet of nature and survival.
The shameful thing is that there are lawyers defending her, some lawyers are complete and utter scum. These are doctors charged with protecting peoples’ health.
Sorry, but when you become an American citizen you follow American law. You can’t have it both ways. You must choose.
If you choose to be a Moslem then you should be HAPPY to return to your own country. There you can do all the FGM, all the beheadings and all the donkey ucking you want.
Fry her inside a tub of boiling lard — SHARIA RECIPE, anyone?
If she wants to live according to Sharia law, there are muslim majority countries she can move to.. Americans follow American law. It’s time to start shipping these ‘people’ to their real homes…
I would like to know if they used Medicaid to pay for this? I would also like to know if they were educated in a school in the US? It would be a shame to find out that hey are using federal funds to conduct an illegal medical procedure. Also is this being done in a hospital or a clinic that is inspected by the state? IF so, why did it take so long to stop this?
If they were not educated in the U.S. why are they called doctors, and why are they allowed to have a “practice”? I know there are many people from foreign lands with degrees in all sorts of different areas that can not practice their chosen profession because it doesn’t suit the laws of the U.S.A.
Please ‘splain how Islam/Sharia can so brainwash a woman to sanction, must less perform, this practice?
There is something really sick in practicing this mutilation of Mother Nature’s beautiful creation.
Could it be Islam is NOT a ‘religion’ in any sense? Only a means of control of the ignorant masses.
Send this woman( I use the term lightly) to as many years in a hole as they can
Just one muslum on the jury will make prosecutions like these irrelevant…
IT is living in America.
By living in America, she MUST accept America’s SUPREME LAWS of the LAND!
America has laws which EVERY PERSON in America is EXPECTED to follow.
The islamic CULTIC laws of sharia are NOT ACCEPTED.
sharia laws CANNOT be used in an America judicial system.
Therefore, ONLY American laws apply to her and every person who breaks them.
Judge her according to American laws!
McCARRAN / WALTER ACT of 1952 CAN be used to remove these CULT believers.