Did Tampa Authorities Cover Up a Muslim Honor Killing?

 
By Gina Miller
DakotaVoice.com

On Wednesday, I was outraged when I read Pamela Geller’s column for WorldNetDaily. You may be familiar with Ms. Geller from her website Atlas Shrugs and her work with Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer in establishing the Stop Islamization of America organization.

Ms. Geller reported on a story of which I was previously unaware: the suspicious death of a Muslim woman in Tampa, Florida back in August of 2009. Her death was ruled “accidental” by Tampa authorities, but judging from the facts and circumstances of the case, it seems more likely that her death was murder, a so-called “honor killing” by her family.

As Ms. Geller wrote,

“A Muslim woman shunned by her devout Muslim family for her ‘shameful’ divorce dies a sudden death after ‘throwing herself on the floor’ in front of her family, and it’s classified an accident. That’s what Florida law enforcement determined. No one was charged in the death of 48-year-old Fatima Abdallah in Florida. But there is evidence that she may have been a victim of Islamic honor killing, and that Tampa authorities are complicit in a cover-up.

Honor killing is the all too common Islamic practice in which a woman who has brought ‘shame’ to the family is murdered to preserve family ‘purity.’ It should be exposed, investigated and stopped in the U.S.—not covered up. This is Shariah in America. The idea that a woman would die after she ‘threw herself to the floor’ is institutionalized devaluation of women and tacit sanctioning of honor killing—in accord with Islamic law.

Medical examiner Laura Hair ruled Fatima Abdallah’s death accidental. Deputy Police Chief Marc Hamlin said, ‘The bottom line is, no matter how long you investigate and no matter how much you investigate, it’s not going to overrule the competent medical evidence that it was an accident.’ How do they know that? How is it more likely that she threw herself to the floor than she was fatally thrown to the floor?

Even worse, the Tampa Police report claims that Abdallah committed suicide by repeatedly striking her head against a coffee table. The idea defies logic, belies reality. There is a great deal of evidence that the Tampa Police investigation was drastically flawed and that the Police Department and medical examiner ignored numerous indications that Fatima Abdallah did not commit suicide or die in an accident, but was brutally assaulted.”

This is a stunning outrage! Have our people in positions of authority in the United States really become so gelded that they will purposefully turn a blind eye to murder for fear of retaliation by backward Islamist maniacs? Unbelievable! The constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion in America does not extend to illegal activities like murder! I have long said that Islam is in reality only a militant-political ideology disguised as a religion, and Islamic Shariah law is completely incompatible with the laws and freedoms of the United States of America.

After reading reports of a very thorough, independent investigation by Prestige Investigations, which was launched by David Caton of the Florida Family Association, it is glaringly apparent to me that this woman was very likely a murder victim and that Tampa authorities have gone out of their way to cover it up. There were blatant inconsistencies in both the family’s stories and reports by Tampa police and the Tampa medical examiner.

You have to read all the information from the investigation to get the full, sickening story of what plainly appears to be a brutal honor killing by a Muslim family and a subsequent cover-up by authorities right here in the United States. Fatima Abdallah’s reportedly “self-inflicted” injuries included wounds to her head and face as well as broken ribs with hemorrhaging consistent with blunt force trauma to her rib cage.

Here are only a few points from the extensive investigation findings (all of which I do not have the space to detail here),

“The ‘accidental cause of death’ that Fatima Abdallah allegedly ‘slammed her head into a wood coffee table (and carpeted floor), multiple times’ until she died is difficult to comprehend. GO15. Lt. Scott Ashley with Tampa Rescue #21, Cross Creek Blvd-New Tampa who was interviewed by Prestige Investigations, Inc. said ‘He did remember the call and stated that when he got to the scene he observed the decedent and thought that ‘someone had beat the crap out of her.’ Lt. Ashley also said that ‘it would be very difficult for someone to hit their heads hard enough to cause loss of consciousness. It would be similar to someone stopping their breathing and causing their death.’

It is difficult to accept that the damage done to the coffee table shown in crime scene photographs DSC_508, DSC_509 and DSC_510 was self inflicted or accidental.

Five family members waited 2 ½ hours before calling 911. The mother, three brothers and sister-in-law allegedly knew of Fatima’s injuries but waited 2 ½ hours until Ali A. Alkahla allegedly arrived from Ft. Myers to call 911. However, the 911 Dispatch (DIS1) report states that Muhammad called 911 not Ali…

The 911 dispatch (GO16) (DIS1) was given an entirely different account of the (1) deceased’s frame of mind, (2) how the deceased was discovered and (3) the circumstances that lead to her death compared to the accounts given by Muhammad Hmeid [her brother] and Nafish A. Kahla [her mother] (GO20). GO16 reports ‘Per the dispatch details, the decedent was discovered unconscious and unresponsive within the family shared residence. The call details also noted that the decedent had been cleaning, and may have passed out due to cleaning product fumes.’ (1) The dispatch call states the deceased had the responsible presence of mind to be cleaning the house which is significantly different from Muhammad’s account of her acting mentally unstable. (2) The dispatch call states she was discovered unconscious while Muhammad states his mother witnessed her self inflict injury. (3) The dispatch account alleges the deceased passed out from cleaning product fumes while Muhammad’s version alleges that she repeatedly beat herself to death on the coffee table and the floor. There appears to be no attempt by TPD in the GO to reconcile these conflicting accounts. This gross disparity in accounts also went unnoted in the TPD GO report.”

There is much more to this story, and all the details point to a Muslim honor killing. “Honor killing” is the worst kind of misnomer!

Pamela Geller, David Caton, and others are demanding that Tampa authorities re-open this investigation. This woman’s likely murder must not be covered up by the very people who are charged with protecting American citizens and bringing criminals to justice. America must not allow Islamic Shariah law to intimidate the authorities and dominate our American laws.

It’s time for us to put a dead stop to this barbaric invasion of our nation by retrograde Islamic morons who treat women as merely possessions to be abused or even murdered at the whim of the men in the family. It’s sickening! This is not America! It can never be allowed to metastasize in our nation! The problem is we’re already seeing instances of Islamic honor killings in various places across our nation, and even one is one too many.

It seems that there are people in positions of power here in our country who are so afraid of Muslim anger and reaction that they will bend over backward to keep the American people from learning the truth about the horrible behavior of Islamists in our midst. We’re constantly seeing the media and others in authority downplaying reports of Muslims being caught in terror plots or actually pulling them off. We see that the very last thing they want to report is that Muslims are behind any of it; instead, they desperately try to conjure up imaginary Christian terrorists, as that loser Democrat Sheila Jackson-Lee attempted to do during Congressman Peter King’s hearings on Muslim radicals in America. There is the behavior of the suicidal Left, but their insane denial of reality will not change that deadly reality.

In the meantime, Pamela Geller, David Caton and those with them are asking the American people to contact Florida State Attorney Mark Ober and Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn to demand that the State of Florida re-open this case and correctly weigh the compelling evidence that powerfully points to foul play in the horrible death of Fatima Abdallah.

As Pamela Geller concludes her column,

“We called upon State Attorney Mark Ober, Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn and Tampa City Council members to recognize the numerous anomalies in the Tampa Police Department report that ruled Fatima Abdallah’s death a suicide, and to open a genuine investigation into the possibility that she was murdered in an Islamic honor killing.

Does being a Muslim mean you can get away with murder?

Freedom fighters must demand the case be re-opened. Are we to sanction honor killing in this country on our watch? This is Shariah – fight it. Click here to send your email urging State Attorney Mark Ober and Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn to conduct a thorough and proper investigation. This cannot and must not stand.”

I could not agree more.

Gina Miller, a native of Texas, is a radio commentator. She also works with her husband installing and repairing residential irrigation systems and doing landscaping on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.