Michigan Attorney General Requested Closing FGM Clinic Owner's Case Four Months Before Federal Charges Were Dismissed
The closure memo is fully redacted.
Michigan's attorney general requested closing the licensing investigation into an FGM clinic owner four months before the federal case against him was dismissed.
On July 27, 2018, Michigan’s Assistant Attorney General Bridget K. Smith recommended closing the state’s licensing investigation into Dr. Fakhruddin Attar, the owner of the clinic at the center of America’s first federal FGM prosecution. The federal FGM charges were not dismissed until November 20, 2018, four months later.
Smith sent her recommendation in a memo titled “Request to Close File” addressed to Cheryl Wykoff Pezon, then Director of the Bureau of Professional Licensing at LARA. LARA received the memo on August 7, 2018, as recorded by a received stamp on the document.
Like the closure memo for Dr. Nagarwala, the physician accused of performing the procedures at Attar's clinic, the substantive content of the Attar memo is redacted in full. The state has never explained why it closed either investigation.
As I have previously reported, Dr. Attar still holds an active, unrestricted Michigan medical license (No. 4301067384) with no record of discipline. Federal prosecutors alleged that Attar allowed Dr. Jumana Nagarwala to perform FGM on young girls at his Livonia clinic after hours for over a decade, with his wife Farida assisting during the procedures. Prosecutors estimated that as many as 100 girls may have been cut at the clinic over a twelve-year period. His clinic has since reopened at a new location in Farmington Hills and is accepting new patients, including children.
Michigan’s Board of Medicine unanimously authorized the investigation into Dr. Attar on April 21, 2017. Board reviewer Dr. Peter Graham wrote: “I approve investigation. Please also refer to Director Gaedeke for summary suspension, which I approve.” Board reviewer Dr. James Sondheimer, a professor of medicine at Wayne State University, wrote: “Agree with proceeding with investigation. Res ipsa loquitur,” a legal term meaning “the facts speak for themselves.”
Despite the Board's authorization, no disciplinary action was taken. The only document that would explain this decision, the closure memo from AAG Smith, is redacted in full.
Documents obtained from the Attorney General’s office show that Smith authored both the Attar and Nagarwala closure memos on the same date, July 27, 2018, and sent them to the same recipient. A response from LARA’s Cynthia Rowe to Smith, dated August 14, 2018, is also withheld under attorney-client privilege.
Both closure memos were sent while the federal case was still active. Trial had been scheduled for January 2019. The state did not wait for the federal case to conclude. As we reported previously, Michigan closed the Nagarwala investigation on September 25, 2018, two months before the federal dismissal. The AG recommended closing the Attar investigation even earlier, on July 27, four months before the federal case ended.
Due to Bridget K. Smith’s recommendation and the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs’ acceptance of it, the doctor who owned a clinic prosecuted for FGM still holds his medical license and would have retained it even if convicted.
Those involved have hidden their reason for protecting FGM doctors’ medical licenses from the public.
The Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs and the Michigan Attorney General’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
This is an ongoing investigation. If you’d like to support this work, you can contribute here: Expose Medical Board for Licensing an FGM Doctor