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Ammon News - Rema Jamel and her father, Jamal Alnamroti, two weeks ago in the Shands Burn Unit, where Jamel is recovering from third-degree burns over 85 percent of her body. She told police her husband, Khalid Mohd, doused her with lighter fluid and set her on fire when she threatened to leave him.

The last thing 32-year-old Rema Jamel of Jordan says she remembers from March 27 is her husband, 39-year-old Khalid Mohd, pouring lighter fluid on her and slamming her against the wall of their Palatka home.

She told police she doesn't remember the flames that engulfed her or her skin melting off most of her body.

While Mohd is in the Putnam County Jail, awaiting trial on charges of aggravated attempted murder, Jamel has been in the Burn Unit at Shands at the University of Florida in Gainesville. She has been undergoing treatments and skin grafts for the third-degree burns over 85 percent of her body.

She also has been fighting off infections that could kill her or cause her to lose a limb. Burn victims say what's left of their skin often feels like hot grease splattering on it every second of every minute, day and night.

The one constant by Jamel's side has been her father, Jamal Alnamroti. (Article Continues below)


Rema Jamel and her father, Jamal Alnamroti, two weeks ago in the Shands
Burn Unit, where Jamel is recovering from third-degree burns over 85
percent of her body. She told police her husband, Khalid Mohd, doused
her with lighter fluid and set her on fire when she threatened to leave
him.

Courtesy of Jamal Alnamroti

He came in April to see her, then returned to Amman, where he sold his real estate business, left his wife and five other children behind and moved to Palatka to take care of Jamel's two sons, ages 8 and 7, and to look after his oldest child.

Each day, he takes his grandsons to school in Palatka, drives to Shands to see Jamel, returns to Palatka to pick up the boys, then brings them to Gainesville to see their mother.

Jamel no longer can feed herself, so he or her nurses spoon food into her mouth. She sometimes cries uncontrollably.

Jamel was originally taken to Putnam County Medical Center, but doctors there saw how extensive Jamel's burns were, so they transferred her to Shands. Officials at Shands called the Palatka Police Department, which began investigating the incident.

But because she couldn't communicate, police had no way of knowing her version of events until she was able to speak again.

However, Mohd called someone in Amman the day she was burned and described what he had done. That man called his brother, who also lives in Palatka, and the brother told police.

The marriage

Alnamroti describes a marriage that is common in the Middle East. His daughter married Mohd, and they had two children. But then he left for America to earn more money. He opened a convenience store in Palatka and would send home to his wife and children about $300 a month — not enough to pay expenses.

So Jamel's father chipped in. It was Alnamroti who was a father figure to the boys, he said.

"If one asked for one piece of candy, I would buy two," he said. "If he asks me about something, I buy more. Their father is not there."

Mohd, who had obtained a green card, would return to Amman once or twice a year to see Jamel and the boys but then return to the states after 10 days or two weeks.

Alnamroti said that during one of Mohd's last trips home in 2009, his son-in-law married another woman, which is legal in Jordan. But he did it without Jamel's permission, which is illegal. Instead, Mohd got his sister to pose as Jamel, and she forged the necessary papers, Alnamroti said.

In September 2009, Mohd moved Jamel and the boys to Palatka.

An argument escalates

The day Jamel was burned in March, Alnamroti said Mohd told her he wanted to bring the other wife to Palatka. She argued that she and her boys wanted to become American citizens like he had done in 2008. He told her he wouldn't do anything for her, and so she said she wanted to go home to Amman — and bring the boys with her.

Mohd said he would kill Jamel and bury her in the filled-in pool before he would let her take the boys, Alnamroti said. She said she would call the police. He ripped the phone out of her hand, Alnamroti said. She went into the bedroom, and that's when Mohd allegedly got the lighter fluid.

The two boys were outside when it happened, but they saw their mother come out of the house on fire, her skin falling off of her.
Jamel can't lie down, and her arms are permanently frozen in a bent position. It was only two months ago that she regained the ability to speak and tell police it was her husband who attacked her. Mohd originally had told Palatka police that Jamel was trying to light the barbecue grill at 10 a.m. that morning and accidentally set herself on fire. Then Palatka police said Mohd told them Jamel had poured the lighter fluid on herself and had set herself on fire.

But the only part of Jamel's body that wasn't burned was the top of her head and some of her face. Mohd was arrested in August.
Dr. Gina Giovinco, a counselor at Holy Faith Catholic Church, has been helping Alnamroti and the boys with everything from a shoulder to cry on to phone calls to lawmakers to try to extend Alnamroti's visa.

"He needs to talk about what has happened and his sadness and the love he has for his daughter and the children," Giovinco said. She spent years in the Middle East, working in refugee camps. She offered to take in the boys if Alnamroti had to leave them here. "They're all alone in this. Even though the legal people are helping them, it's not like having someone to comfort them."
And area lawyer Samuel Mutch, a member of Westminster Presbyterian Church, also has been working this week to try to extend Alnamroti's visa so Jamel could remain at Shands.

"Churches in Gainesville are helping this Muslim woman," he said.
amel didn't have health insurance and so Shands is covering the cost of her care, which Giovinco said could cost between $3 million and $4 million. A Shands employee could not comment on the case because Jamel is not listed as a patient there. It is common for the hospital to leave domestic violence victims' names off patient lists.

Alnamroti's six-month visa runs out Sunday, and he said the Florida Department of Children and Families told him this week he had to have plane tickets for himself and the boys, or the boys would be put into foster care. He bought tickets for all of them, including Jamel.

They will travel Sunday to the Middle East — to a location he doesn't want his son-in-law to know — where Jamel will receive free care from a doctor trained at Shands' Burn Unit. Alnamroti said he will rent an apartment there to be near his daughter, who still needs 10 to 12 more surgeries to reconstruct her skin.

Officials with U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson's office said they couldn't talk about Alnamroti's case. But they said if he and Jamel need to come back to Florida for the trial or for more treatments, they would have to apply for new visas through regular channels.
For Alnamroti, it seems enough to him that he still has his daughter.

"I don't believe Rema's alive," Alnamroti said, tears in his eyes. "God is looking (out) for her."

* Kimberly C. Moore / Gainsville Sun


Rema Jamel and Khalid Mohd on their wedding day in Amman, Jordan, in 2000.