Website of attorney who defended Rifqa Bary gets hacked

An attorney who defended runaway Christian convert Rifqa Bary said recently that the website of an organization he heads was hacked by an extremist Muslim.

John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, said the group’s website was disabled by a hacker who called himself Jhon Tairy. The hacker said he did it because of the FFPC’s views regarding “Great Islam,” the Catholic News Agency reported.

The hacker managed to get into the server that hosted the site, and wiped out all of the site’s data. The hacker also changed the code that was used to build the site. As a result, the FFPC website is currently inoperative and it will cost up to $20,000 to rebuild it, wdbo.com said.

Half of the required amount has so far been donated by a supporter, Charisma Magazine said. However, the group also claimed that the corruption of the website may affect the 2010 election results in Florida, according to the Catholic News Agency.

The FFPC said in an email that it sent to followers that an obscene letter was also left behind by the hacker in broken English. In a screenshot of the site, Arabic script was shown on a fragmented, brightly colored backdrop. The Catholic News Agency reported that the message said, “You got hacked due to you s**t thinking abt Great Islam. (T)his is due to JHON TAIRY … do good and have good … **** all florida.”

The five-year-old FFPC site had featured the case of Rifqa Bary and said that after she converted from Islam to Christianity, she fled to Florida because her parents “threatened to kill her for not renouncing her faith,” according to the Catholic News Agency. Bary became legally independent from her parents last month when she turned 18. She has gained permanent legal residence in the U.S.

Stemberger claimed that the mosque of Bary’s parents had links to international terrorist groups. He also stated that Bary could be murdered for apostasy if she were made to return to her native Sri Lanka, the Catholic News Agency said.

In his defense of Bary Stemberger also said the mosque her parents attended supported “honor killings.” In a memorandum to the court he documented his claim, and the memo was also posted on the FFPC website angering many Muslims, Charisma Magazine said.

Stemberger believes recent news reports about a $10 million defamation lawsuit that was filed against him last week by Omar Tarazi, lawyer of Bary’s parents, may have motivated the hacker, Charisma Magazine said.

Tarazi also included blogger Pamela Oshry, who goes by the name Pamela Geller, in his lawsuit. Tarazi alleges that Geller, in her website Atlas Shrugs, falsely stated that he is with Hamas and is getting funds from groups with terrorist links, Charisma Magazine reported.

Stemberger, who is also being investigated by the Florida Bar for possible ethics violations connected to Bary’s case, said he will report the hacking to the police and to the FBI. He told wdbo.com, “It’s a criminal act.” He also said the lawsuit filed against him by the lawyer of Bary’s parents is “frivolous.”