|
Florida Hospital Rejects Three Muslim Medical Students After False Charges
 |
| Kambiz
Butt
|
WASHINGTON,
September 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Three Muslim medical
students said Sunday, September 15, they would seek an alternative
means to study after a Florida hospital cancelled their internship
after false terrorist accusations were lodged against them.
The
three, Ayman Gheith, 27, Kambiz Butt, 25, both from the Chicago area,
and Omar Choudhary, 23, of Independence, Missouri, said they would not
take legal action against the hospital.
“They
understand the hospital's position and they have decided to work with
the hospital in an effort to find another program,” Altaf Ali of the
Florida office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
told Agence France-Presse (AFP) by telephone.
The
three are all second-year students Ross Medical College on the
Caribbean island of Dominica, who had been accepted in a nine-week
internship program at Larkin Community Hospital in South Florida.
On
Friday, September 13, as the three were driving from Chicago to south
Florida to begin the program, their two cars were stopped by Florida
police following an alert.
A
woman told police she had heard the men make terrorist threats in a
roadside restaurant in Georgia, according to Florida authorities.
The
woman’s statement, according to police, was that one of the three
said Americans “mourned on 9/11 and they are going to mourn again on
9/13.”
 |
| Ayman
Gheith
|
Officers
shut down the section of the highway where they were stopped, searched
their two cars and luggage, found nothing suspicious but held them for
17 hours before releasing them without charges, police said.
Word
of the police action spread quickly and Larkin hospital was deluged
with some 200 e-mails urging that the three should not be allowed to
participate in the internship program.
Hospital
director Doctor Jack Michel said the small hospital could not deal
with the publicity and threats and do its health care work at the same
time, and announced the three were no longer welcome in the internship
program.
“We
are disappointed it had to come to this,” said the CAIR’s Ali.
“The officials were too quick to accept and act on the woman’s
accusations, which turned out to be unfounded.”
Florida’s
Sun Sentinel newspaper quoted Michel saying: “It was a
difficult decision. It’s not safe for them to be here — for them,
for the hospital or the patients.”
“Probably
people only remember bits and pieces of what they saw on TV and are
drawing conclusions from that,” he said, the paper reported.
The paper said that the men denied making the comments and that they
were driving from Chicago to South Miami to find an apartment before
starting their nine-week clinical rotation at Larkin on Monday and
only discussed school issues at the restaurant.
However,
the Sun-Sentinel said that Ali at first said he was considering
legal action against the hospital for violating the students’ civil
rights. He was more measured later after Michel, president of the
112-bed hospital located one block from U.S. 1 and Sunset Drive,
agreed to meet with him today to discuss the issue.
 |
| Omer
Choudhary
|
“I
implored him to not make a hasty decision yet,” Ali said from Tampa
on Saturday afternoon. “I reiterated to him we cannot succumb to
pressure based on hate. If he is receiving hate and hostile e-mails,
we can’t succumb to that kind of intimidation.
“If
society allows this to take place, it’s setting a bad precedent for
the future,” he said, the paper said.
Gheith
is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Jordan, Choudhary is a U.S.
citizen born in Detroit, and Butt is here on a visa, reportedly from
Iran, it added.
“He
went through two years of school, he’s got nine weeks left and
they’re going tell him he can’t? That’s not fair,” said
Gheith’s brother, Abdallah Gheith, Sun-Sentinel reported.
“He
wasn’t convicted of anything, and we’re in America,” he said.
“What happened to the Constitution?”
|
