Posted on 01/19/2005 5:27:28 AM PST by wmichgrad
DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) — A Muslim immigrant from Lebanon has been cleared of responsibility for her 2-year-old son's 1985 death, which led Michigan authorities to give her three young children for adoption by an evangelical Christian couple.
The children, now ages 22, 21 and 18, have been trained to be Christian missionaries, their birth father says.
Wayne County Circuit Judge Edward Thomas in Detroit on Tuesday ordered that the death certificate for Samier Amer be changed to say that his death was an accident, not a homicide. The ruling came after the county settled a lawsuit brought by the parents.
The family says that Samier had a rare brittle bone disorder and died after falling in the bathtub and fracturing his skull.
"I think now God has spoken, " said the mother, Rehab Amer. "I did not kill my son. My son cried from the grave for justice."
The state took the children into protective custody after the agency accused Amer and her husband Ahmed of child abuse.
A jury found Rehab Amer not guilty of second-degree murder, but Michigan's welfare department refused to return the surviving children to their parents.
In 1989, the couple lost parental rights to the children, who were adopted in 1990 by a Pentecostal Christian couple. The Amers say authorities were biased against them.
The Amers say the adoptive parents taught the children that Muslims cannot enter heaven because they do not believe that Jesus is God.
After several years of knowing nothing about their children, the Amers have spoken to them in recent years and heard that "we're all going to hell," Ahmed Amer told the Detroit Free Press.
The 22-year-old, who was named Mohammed Ali at birth and later renamed Adam, lives in Minnesota, Ahmed Amer said. He said the 21-year-old twin sister of Samier, who was named Sueheir and renamed Suzanne, lives in Flint, while their 18-year-old sister, born Zinabe and renamed Rochelle, live in Clarkston and is a high school senior.
Adoptive mother Essie Stamper of Clarkston said she understands the suffering that the case has caused to Rehab Amer.
"It's been very had for her losing all four of her children," she told The Detroit News. "And that's understandable, of course. If it had happened to me, I don't know that I could have made it."
Asked how the children view the case and their birth parents, she said, "All of my kids are adults now, and they'll believe what they want to believe."
The Amers have said that Samier had brittle bone disease from birth. X-rays taken when the boy was 4 months old showed five bone fractures.
The death certificate completed by former Wayne County assistant medical examiner Sawait Kanluen listed the death as homicide from blunt force injury to the head.
Werner Spitz, who was chief medical examiner at the time, examined the boy's skeleton in 2002 after the body was exhumed at the request of the Amers. He said Tuesday that he did not consider the death a homicide.
Well, at least some of the kids were saved.
So when the exhumed the body of the boy did they test a bone sample to see if he really had brittle bone disease?
One out of three this time.
"Does not compute. Does not compute. Does not compute."
I'm monitoring for heads exploding a la Captain Kirk talking to a computer...
smoke = fire
Either that or, admit them to America, appease their leaders and get a prayer rug
Sounds to me like a bunch of trolls are trying to make conservatives appear hypocritical. There's no way the welfare department should have had the right to keep those children away from their parents in the absence of a conviction.
I don't know if I would say evil. Completely inept sums it up rather nicely.
No doubt about it....her three children have been saved from an eternity in hell...perhaps their witness might even in the end (God Willing) save their parents..
Thank you Jesus for your infinite mercies on us sinners...
imo
Good Lord people. The state just took somone kids permanently for no reason other than she was falseley accused. If any of you think this is not a horrible tragedy you are f@#@$@#in nuts.
What are you going to say when its your kid that winds up given up for adoption to a gay couple when you are falsely accused and then aquitted ?
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