PLYMOUTH — On Friday, August 7, a press conference was held at United Memorial Gardens to announce a lawsuit against the cemetery for burying a stranger’s body in a plot previously purchased by a Muslim family.

United Memorial Gardens is a prominent cemetery used by many local Muslims. The cemetery includes an Islamic garden meant to maintain the procedures and protocols of Islamic burials.

The Charara family purchased plots next to Mahassen Charara after she died in 1996 from an aneurysm. However, the family has since been subjected to a great deal of distress after the cemetery buried non-family members in the purchased plots.

Twice.

The Charara family sued the cemetery the first time, when it had claimed to have mistakenly buried a man with the same last name next to Mahassen.

However, this past March, the cemetery made the same blunder, burying another unrelated stranger in the purchased plot.

On Friday, Waad Charara, Mahassen’s daughter, was on her way to the press conference with her attorney, Tarek Baydoun, to announce the lawsuit. She decided to stop by her mother’s grave, first. She said what she discovered was very disheartening.

“As I parked my car, I observed my mom’s grave,” said Charara, who works for the Arab American News. “I can see the unearthed dirt surrounding her grave. I literally sat in my car thinking ‘what’s going on now?’”

Charara said she went up to her mother’s grave and discovered that her tombstone was sinking into the ground from one end and sticking out above ground level at the other end.

“I was going hysterical,” Charara said.

She immediately contacted Baydoun, who was in the middle of a press conference attended by media outlets that included WXYZ Channel 7, WDIV Channel 4 and FOX 2 news. Baydoun led reporters to Mahassen’s grave, where they were able to capture the cemetery’s negligence as it was transpiring.

Baydoun contacted the cemetery to inform managment of the grave’s conditions. The cemetery acted swiftly, cleaned the tombstone, straightened it and brought it back to ground level.

Charara said the cemetery’s continued negligence towards her family is unfathomable. She noted that she’s developed a phobia of going to visit her mother, because she can’t predict what will happen next.

“It’s so bad that I don’t go to visit my mother, because I’m always worried about what I’m going to see,” Charara said. “This is the third time they’ve mistreated us. Isn’t it terrible that you want to visit your loved ones but you are terrified to do so?”

The Charara family aren’t the only ones feeling the impact of the cemetery blunder. The second man buried next to Mahassen was recently moved to another plot, causing grief for his family as well.

Baydoun told The Arab American News that he filed a complaint with the Michigan Cemetery Commission, citing corruption linked to ownership of the cemetery. The cemetery has yet to explain how it made the same mistake twice and buried a stranger in an already purchased plot.

He said the Charara family was also upset that the cemetery issued a statement to the media last week that claimed the plaintiffs were “made whole.”

“We’ve asked for explanations and we have not received an explanation,” he said. “They apologized verbally on the phone and admitted their wrongdoing. It was particularly offense that they released a statement stating that the plaintiffs had been ‘made whole.’ It’s offensive and disregarding the pain and suffering caused to the family. Their position now is that my clients have been made whole and that’s unacceptable and it’s clearly not true from a legal perspective.”

Baydoun provided background information on Detroit Memorial Partners, co-owners of the cemetery along with Midwest Memorial Group. Baydoun noted that Detroit Memorial Partners is being sued for fraud in a separate case and that the company’s assets are up for sale in the northern district of Georgia.

A portion of that money was supposed to be allocated into trust funds for United Memorial Gardens. Baydoun is concerned that if the money isn’t brought back to the cemetery, lack of maintenance will cause the cemetery to deteriorate over time.

He has called on Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette and the U.S. Attorneys for the Eastern and Western Districts of Michigan, Barbara McQuade and Patrick Miles Jr., to help bring the trust funds back to the cemetery.

“As a concerned member of the public, I’ve made a promise to myself and to everyone that they aren’t going to get away with this,” Baydoun said. “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure the owners don’t get away with it. I’m talking about the corruption that led to this incident. There has to be accountability. Otherwise, the cemetery will look like an old ancient burial ground.”