Muslim Convert/Apostate Gets Asylum...No, not Rifqa

An apostate in America ............ a convert out of Islam has received asylum (Phil Keating, call your office - oh yeah, don't bother, honor killings don't exist).

This woman got asylum and doesn't know it. She is either on the run or they got to her. Perhaps Pepperdine could start the paperwork for Rifqa.

Asylum Seeker Realized her Dream But Now is Missing LA Times (hat tip Robert)

Gilda Ghanipour has spent the last nine years on the run.

Abandoned by her Muslim family for converting to Christianity, she has shuttled from one address to the next, terrified of being deported to her native Iran, where apostasy can be punished by death.

Last year, Ghanipour stumbled upon a retired immigration judge and his Pepperdine University Law School students, who championed her quest for asylum.

Ghanipour won the case. But she doesn't know it.

The devoutly religious woman vanished shortly before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services delivered on her dream at the end of August.

Her Pepperdine legal advocates are desperately searching for her -- calling churches she frequented, scouring prison databases, knocking on doors where she once lived.

Somewhere in Los Angeles, they believe, Ghanipour is wandering alone, as she has for most of the last decade, probably clutching her beloved Bible, possibly sleeping in a homeless shelter or in someone's spare bedroom.

Police haven't been able to find her. The coroner has no record of her. Efforts by The Times to locate her through relatives, churches and homeless advocates also were unsuccessful.

The disappearance of the 49-year-old Ghanipour, who speaks three languages and once attended medical school, is especially difficult for those at Pepperdine Law School's Asylum Clinic.

Gilda, as they've known her, was their first client. She offered the lawyers-in-training an early taste of victory. They have only a grainy black-and-white photo to remind them of her thick black hair, her proud smile, her opinionated ways. And they are worried, knowing that Ghanipour has been in ill health.

"Part of me doesn't want to celebrate until we find her," said Kristin Heinrich, a third-year law student.

Ghanipour recounted her life story in declarations accompanying her asylum application. According to the written statements, she spent her childhood in the city of Arak and her adolescence in Tehran, about 200 miles to the north. She married in 1979 shortly after graduating from high school and moved with her husband to Germany to escape the strict fundamentalist rule of the Islamic Revolution.

Comments

[satyabhashnam.blogspot.com]

Arun Shourie's The World of Fatwas featured on Andrew Bostom blog. Highly recommended!! http://is.gd/4zO6m

[CHOI]

pamela has posted NEWS that Impacts TWO issues, Rifqa Bary & Iran.
The Main Street Media WILLFULLY IGNORES MAJOR FACTS that Pamela Discovers ,and that are INSTRUCTIVE to the American People.

Here is a 49 yr Old Iranian women who is either on the run or Caught and Honor Killed?

49 yrs old and Missing;
Rifqa is ONLY 17 and her SAFETY GUARANTEED if she would be PROTECTED Until her Birthday.

This story and the Long Sad Scroll of Sharia Victims Reposted by Pamela Yesterday, should be FORWARDED & LINKED Everywhere and Anywhere, PARTICULARLY in/to the State of Ohio,its Media(s) and ALL of its Public Officials.

Individuals can FORWARD to any personal Family,Friends,etc. they have in Ohio with the REQUEST that Ohio Citizens Call,E-Mail,and "Snail" Real Mail their State Legislators,and other Officials, Particularly the Democratic Governor,Strickland.
Nothing like TRAYS of MAIL ,Piled Up to make an IMPRESSION, especially in this Digital Age.

[jj]

pamela:

a mitzvah on you.

i have been arguing for some time now that rifq bary's attorneys should apply for asylum for her, on the basis of religious persecution. her florida lawyers should have made the application, it is my devout wish that her ohio attorneys do so.

the beauty of an asylum application is that it can be made from within the united states: the applicant does not have to leave the united states in order to do so.

pamela, you and your colleagues spencer, bostom, warraq, sultan, aver, steyn and others have made a marvelous factual case of what apostacy means, and how an apostate in any muslim country, society or family is in grave danger. (just like the fact laden briefs in brown v. board of education.)

now, it is time for lawyers to take that case, and to make it before the u.s. citizenship and immigration service.

i hope that you fax, email or post this blog post to rifqa's new attorneys in ohio.

a wonderful job, a wonderful post, wonderous are your ways.

john jay
milton freewater, oregon usa

[Mackie]

Can we digitize the grainy photo that Pepperdine has of Ghanipour and encourage FOX News to do a story on her situation?

Hopefully someone, somewhere will see the story and the photo and know of her wherabouts.

[Timur]

Nine years? This breaks my heart. What do you want to bet that when they do find her she isn't breathing? I just pray I'm wrong...