Columbus, Ohio (May 29, 2013) — The American Freedom Law Center (AFLC), a national, nonprofit Judeo-Christian law firm, filed a motion yesterday to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a former Jordanian government official against several national security experts after he was fired as the Multicultural Relations Officer of the Ohio Department of Homeland Security for falsifying his background. AFLC, along with local co-counsel David W.T. Carroll of Carroll, Ucker & Hemmer, LLC, is representing Todd Alan Sheets, Stephen Coughlin, John Guandolo, and Patrick Poole, who specialize on the Muslim Brotherhood and the sharia-driven threat of stealth jihad to America.
At issue is the dubious background of Omar Alomari, a Muslim who immigrated to the United States from Jordan in 1978. In 2005, the Ohio Department of Public Safety’s Office of Homeland Security (OHS) hired Alomari to work as a liaison between OHS and Ohio’s Muslim communities. In this capacity, and as a means for educating OHS on Islamic “cultural competency issues,” Alomari wrote and published “A Guide to Arabic and Islamic Culture.” In this document, Alomari defined jihad as “the benign pursuit of personal betterment.” In addition, Alomari wrote that jihad “may be applied to physical conflict for Muslims, but only in the arena of Muslims defending themselves when attacked or when attempting to overthrow oppression and occupation.” Alomari also noted that “Jihad as a holy war is a European invention, spread in the West.”
Furthermore, Alomari authored a brochure entitled, “Agents of Radicalization,” which promoted several Muslim groups as “organizations we [OHS] are working with.” Several of these groups, which included CAIR and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), have been linked to terrorism by the Department of Justice and the FBI. In fact, CAIR and ISNA were unindicted co-conspirators in the largest terrorism financing trial ever brought by the Department of Justice. Thousands of the brochures were eventually destroyed after OHS discovered the misleading materials.
In 2010, the Jawa Report, a prominent anti-sharia website, began publishing reports on Alomari’s background and his ties to terrorist organizations. After Alomari was fired from his position as a multicultural officer for OHS, investigations that were spearheaded by Patrick Poole, one of AFLC’s clients, revealed that Alomari was once a high-ranking official in the Jordanian government.
After being terminated by the OHS for falsifying his background and covering up an illicit relationship with a student while teaching at a local community college, Alomari filed a lawsuit in Franklin County Common Pleas Court in Ohio against the national security experts, claiming that they caused the OHS to fire him because he was allegedly the subject of some critical analysis during a training session for Ohio law enforcement personnel (Alomari also sued the Columbus Division of Police).
Specifically, Alomari claims that the experts cast him in a “false light” by publishing false statements about him, and that they also tortiously interfered with a business relationship by causing him to be fired as a result of these statements. As AFLC argues in its motion to dismiss, Alomari’s allegations lack the requisite elements to sustain either cause of action.
AFLC Co-Founder and Senior Counsel David Yerushalmi commented: “This case is yet another example of sharia-adherent Muslims using our legal system to engage in ‘lawfare’ that is designed to distort the truth and to obfuscate dangerous links between sharia adherence and terrorism. In effect, Alomari fabricated a legal complaint in reaction to the fact that his agenda of duplicity and misinformation was exposed.”
AFLC’s motion also points out the fact that Alomari was fired from OHS because he lied about his background – notably, he misstated his employment background while applying for employment in a sensitive security position.
Robert Muise, AFLC Co-Founder and Senior Counsel, added: “As the public record demonstrates, the materials published by Alomari are classic Islamist propaganda. Moreover, Alomari’s effort to sue his way to redemption is in reality just another card in the deck of Islamist lawfare. The American Freedom Law Center is committed to defending national security experts, like our clients, from frivolous and abusive litigation tactics designed to intimidate and silence their message.”
Press Release (PDF)