A Florida attorney says the misconduct complaint filed against him is a frivolous motion from a disgruntled opposing lawyer for his legal representation of a Christian who converted from Islam.
The complaint was filed by The Florida Bar on behalf of Columbus attorney Omar Tarazi as he alleges that John Stemberger, who represented Rifqa Bary after she ran away from Ohio to Florida in 2009 because she feared persecution from her family, appeared on TV as the girl’s attorney after he stopped representing her. Tarazi had represented the teenage girl’s parents as they hoped to return Bary to their custody, so he has now filed a $10 million defamation of character lawsuit against Stemberger, along with that grievance before The Florida Bar.
Stemberger, however, thinks Tarazi is upset with his suspicions that the Islamic attorneys might have been paid by someone other than girl’s parents and “the fact that in both Orlando and Ohio, the lawyers who were appointed by the court and who originally started out were somehow no longer involved with the case, and then were replaced with Muslim lawyers who gave us quite a hard time and were very obstructing in the process.”
So he believes the Columbus attorney is disgruntled over the Ohio authorities’ decision that denied Bary’s parents’ request and gave the girl her freedom.
“Unfortunately in today’s society, Islam has become a new protected class,” Stemberger laments. “And the institutions of our society, starting with the media, are bending over backward to accommodate even the...wildest complaints and…the most minor of issues that they may raise.”
But as the facts come to light, Stemberger believes he will be exonerated in the complaint before the bar and the lawsuit against him.