Christians Under Attack

A Christian woman who once served as an FBI informant on her husband's alleged support of terrorism now is seeking divorce from the self-described radical Muslim who told her he would be proud if their two teen sons blew themselves up for Allah.

But she's finding herself on her own – completely – after a judge allowed her lawyer to withdraw, refused to allow an interested lawyer from appearing in her court, and then refused to allow time for any other replacement to be found before today's trial.

At stake are Rosine Collin Ghawji's sons, whose futures have been defined by her husband as being "good Muslims" or dead, she said.

The situation is developing in the case in which Mrs. Ghawji is seeking not only her freedom from her husband, Maher Ghawji, but also to protect her sons Louis and Takek from any violent Islamic plans their father may have for them.

Joe Kaufman, who has run an anti-terrorism organization for several years, noted that both of the Ghawji sons have, in e-mails and other communications, told friends their father was planning to take them to Syria against their will, and one noted that his grandfather has promised to beat him up when he arrived there.

Mrs. Ghawji's local lawyer was given permission by a Memphis, Tenn., judge on Dec. 19 to withdraw from the case, another lawyer willing to represent her – Larry Klayman -- was denied permission to enter the case, and the court ruled that the trial date – today – would not be delayed.

Klayman, who'd been contacted about the case a few months earlier, told WND that the facts read "like a John Grisham novel." Only this case is real life, with the FBI holding ex parte meetings with the judge, the federal agency "wiring" her to record and report on her husband, her husband allegedly threatening the children that they would be better off dead than Christian, and allegations of extramarital affairs.

And Mrs. Ghawji, if her allegations are correct, is up against more than just a judicial system and a divorce trial; but against some of the most radical factions in the world today, including the adherents of blind Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, now serving a life sentence in the SuperMax prison in Colorado on accusations he helped in the planning of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings in New York.

The couple married in 1986, and she said she noticed her husband's unusual activities almost from the beginning. She said between 1987 and 1992 she often waited in the women's room of a mosque for hours while her husband was meeting with Rahman, and later the FBI visited her and asked about some of her husband's acquaintances, including a man the FBI described as being on a "terrorist watch list" who had rented an apartment from her husband.

She said it appeared about that time that her husband's brother, Haitham Ghawji, started appearing more often in their lives.

She said a letter from Haitham justified killing non-Muslims and encouraged Maher to join Jihad, and when Haitham was visiting their home, where the family lived in Memphis, in 1996, he wanted to watch the news one evening.

When the report aired about the attack at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in which 19 American military personnel died, he said, "We got them! The Americans … we got them. They think they are going to rule the world, but they do not know what it is to have war on their own soil, but pretty soon they will," she reported.

The next year when the family obtained a home computer, she started watching the communications through it, and eventually talked with the FBI. They asked her to continue monitoring those, and forward to them e-mails, telephone numbers and the like.

She said on Sept. 11, 2001, a few hours before the terrorism attacks, her husband's brother sent an e-mail announcing some of his friends were coming to the U.S., and they should be made to feel welcome.

When, at a dinner party, a guest remarked how difficult it was to bring items on airplanes because of the new security measures, her husband responded: "Don't worry. We will find another way to get them."

A short time later, he erupted in rage because she had been teaching French to a little Russian Jewish boy in their home. At that point he threatened to kill her with a poison other doctors wouldn't detect and announced he was Wahhabi Muslim, whose beliefs include violence against non-Muslims.

It was at that point an FBI agent convinced her to wear a recording device and monitor her husband's financial dealings, which included donations to a front group accused of raising money for Hamas, she said.

It was also then that he cut off financial support for his family and threatened to take the children to Syria, so she sought a restraining order. But a judge, Donna Fields, ordered the boys to spend every other Sunday with their father even though they pleaded not to.

FBI agent Jim Raddatz told her he suspected her husband of leading a double life – as a physician but also as terrorist financier with connections to a Florida organization that he was unwilling to discuss.

But then he also told her her husband had contacted the FBI and they were upset with him because he hadn't provided them with some information.

Ghawji also staged a campaign of rhetoric, condemning the U.S., Jews and Israel, and praising suicide bombers, and at one point looked her in the eyes and said if their children were not good Muslims, they would be better dead.

It terrified her, she said.

Her husband also had an affair, and possibly more, with a spokeswoman working for the Islamic Society of Central Florida, she said, when details of their actions were confirmed by a private investigator.

That organization, she said, tried to sponsor a fundraiser featuring Siraj Wahhaj, who is on the U.S. Attorney’s list of potential co-conspirators to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

She alleges her husband told her for as little as $1,000 he could hire a "hitman" to kill her, and expressed pride in being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Documents also show Haitham Ghawji has been linked to convicted felon Rafat Jamal Mawlawi, who also is connected to Enaam Arnaout. On April 4, 2005, the FBI conducted a raid on Mawlawi’s residence, and the Memphis Flyer reported authorities finding a hidden stash of loaded weapons and ammunition clips, $34,000 in cash, two pictures of Mawlawi shouldering a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a gruesome videotape of war casualties with Arabic text and more than 20 passports to Morocco, Syria, Iran, and other Middle Eastern countries.

In a "Government Evidentiary Proffer Supporting the Admissibility of Co-Conspirator Statements," on page 67, the U.S. Government indicated that "H. GHAWJI" was mentioned.

No spokesman for her husband, the courts, or the FBI could be reached for a comment over the New Year's Day holiday.

But just recently as allegations of terrorism connections were developing – and being substantiated, the judge sealed the court records in the two-and-a-half-year-old case, scheduled the hearing, allowed the lawyer to leave the case and took the unusual step of ruling that Mrs. Ghawji would not be allowed to bring her case in any other jurisdiction.

Klayman said from the appearance of government participation in the case, with FBI agents meeting with the judge, he contacted FBI general counsel Patrick Kelley with questions about what was going on, because of issues that include equal protection, due process and others.

Kelley's response to Klayman was that he should "do what you have to do," he said.