https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...lation-nine-young-girls-seen-court-again.html
A Muslim doctor on trial for allegedly performing genital mutilation on nine girls, all seven years-old, was also part of a secret network of physicians who traveled across the country performing the brutal procedure, according to federal prosecutors.
Dr. Jumana Nagarwala was cleared of female genital mutilation charges in November 2018 during the nation’s first-of-its-kind case, when a federal judge ruled that a law banning the practice was unconstitutional.
But the Michigan doctor still faces an obstruction charge for allegedly hiding information during the trial, and was back in court Thursday. That saw prosecutors reveal that doctors in California and Illinois were also cutting young girls as part of a religious rite in the esoteric Indian Muslim sect, Dawoodi Bohras, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Nagarwala was initially charged with mutilation, conspiracy and obstruction along with Dr. Fakhruddin Attar, who allowed her to perform the surgeries at his clinic in Livonia, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit.
The same charges were brought against Attar’s wife, Farida, and a woman named Tahera Shafiq, who assisted in the procedure, as well as four women who tricked their daughters into going to the suburban clinic to undergo the practice for religious purposes.
US District Judge Bernard Friedman dismissed all but one obstruction charge against Nagarwala, Attar, his wife Farida and Shafiq in November 2018. He declared a 1996 federal law banning the practice unconstitutional and concluded that it’s up to the states to regulate female genital mutilation.
The obstruction trial was underway until the coronavirus pandemic hit and brought it to a halt. Then, in March, prosecutors issued a superseding indictment with five new charges, including conspiracy to make false statements and witness tampering, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Prosecutors argue that that Nagarwala and her three cohorts lied to the FBI about the mutilations that they were performing and intimidated others in their community to lie if the FBI interviewed them about it.
The four defendants requested Thursday’s hearing to dismiss the case altogether, arguing that the prosecutors were only pursuing the new charges out of retaliation.
‘The government is acting with extreme prosecutorial vindictiveness in issuing yet another superseding indictment nearly half a decade after charges were first issued,’ the defense argued in court filings, seen by the Detroit Free Press, adding that the new charges are ‘retaliation for the defense successfully decimating the government’s case.’
Friedman said Thursday that he would take their arguments into consideration, but was still reviewing the new indictment and would make a decision at a later date.
Nagarwala, who is an emergency room doctor at Henry Ford Health System, was arrested in April 2017 after two young girls accused her of performing the mutilation procedures on them earlier that year.
She denied the allegations and claimed she was performing a religious practice for families in the Muslim sect, Dawoodi Bohras, and that it only involved scraping the membrane of the girls’ genitalia as part of the religious custom.
But doctors’ reports obtained by the Detroit Free Press indicate the children suffered more severe injuries including scarring, a small tear, lacerations and what appeared to be the surgical removal of a portion of genitalia….
