Sally Faulkner charged with kidnap

June 30, 2016

Source: skynews.com.au

Australian woman Sally Faulkner has been charged with kidnapping after the botched child recovery operation to take back her two children from their Lebanese father.

Adam Whittington, the dual Australian-British national who planned the bungled Beirut operation, and two of his colleagues have also been charged with kidnapping.

Judge Rami Abdullah’s decision to recommend charges against Ms Faulkner was unexpected, the judge having previously stated that he did not believe a mother could be found to have kidnapped her own children.

It is understood the charge of kidnapping has a maximum penalty of three years in prison.

The Nine Network journalists and crew involved in the case have avoided criminal charges, but will face a court-imposed fine after a trial, most likely for a misdemeanour.

Nine said its legal team in Lebanon had confirmed charges against the crew had been downgraded.

‘There will still be a trial on a date to be determined and out of respect for the Lebanese legal process we will not be making any further comment while the matter is still before the court,’ the network said in a statement.

Ms Faulkner’s lawyer, Ghassan Moughabghab, told AAP he would not comment on the judge’s decision until he had seen the charges.

Judge Abdullah conducted a three-month investigation into the actions of 60 Minutes reporter Tara Brown, her crew, Ms Faulkner and Whittington’s child recovery team.

Ms Faulkner, Brown, producer Stephen Rice, sound recordist David Ballment and cameraman Ben Williamson were arrested in Beirut on April 6, along with Whittington, Michaels, Barbour, and another Lebanese man, Mohammed Hamza.

They were taken into custody after Whittington’s team snatched Ms Faulkner’s two children, Lahela, 5 and Noah, 3 from a busy suburban street, injuring their Lebanese grandmother.

Ms Faulkner says she took the action after her estranged husband took the children on a two-week holiday in May 2015 and did not return them to Australia as promised.

After spending almost two weeks in prison, Ms Faulkner and the 60 Minutes team were released when the children’s father, Ali Elamine, agreed to drop personal charges of kidnap against them in return for a significant payout, reportedly up to $A500,000, from Nine.

Ms Faulkner agreed to give up custody of her children to obtain her freedom.

Documents provided to the Lebanese court show the network had already paid $A115,000 to Whittington for the recovery of the two children.

 

Whittington, Michaels, Barbour have been refused bail and remain in Aley Prison on the outskirts of Beirut.

Lawyer Joe Karam said Thursday’s indictments followed a failed attempt to negotiate with the family of the children’s father to get the civil charges dropped against Whittington and his colleague.

‘There was no deal … They are closed to the idea of negotiation,’ he said.

‘The family are looking for compensation beyond the payment already made by Channel Nine.’

He confirmed that Faulkner, Whittington and Michaels, as well as the driver Khaled Barbour, had been indicted on the felony charge of kidnapping. Hamza had been indicted on a lesser charge.

The TV crew members, despite commissioning and filming the operation, were charged with failing to report a crime to authorities.

They will stand trial before a district judge in the criminal court and are expected to receive a fine and may be required to pay compensation to the Lebanese government.

The case is expected to go before the Appellate Court next week.

‘There are many precedents where a court has found a parent, even if they are helped by others, should not be charged with kidnapping,’ Karam said.

‘We are still hopeful of a fair outcome and pleased the case is moving through the courts.’

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Nine Network’s botched child abduction story in Lebanon

June 30, 2016

Source: The Australian

The costs of the Nine Network’s disastrous child abduction story in Lebanon continue to escalate, with the network transferring more than $500,000 to its Lebanese legal team last week.

With jailed child recovery agent Adam Whittington and his team of three fixers due back in court as early as today, The Australian has obtained fresh detail about the skyrocketing costs ­associated with the botched operation. It is understood Nine transferred $US400,000 to its Lebanese lawyers on June 24.

The transfer, coupled with earlier payments, put the network’s costs well over $US2 million in legal fees alone.

The payments, which Nine has been at pains to say have been to cover the network’s legal fees, and not to bribe officials, came as the Lebanese judge presiding over the case was expected to make a decision on whether to press ahead with criminal charges against the Nine crew, who were arrested over the failed ­abduction of Lahela and Noah Faulkner, children of Brisbane woman Sally Faulkner.

Nine’s reporter Tara Brown, cameraman Ben Williamson, sound recordist David Bailment and producer Stephen Rice, as well as Ms Faulkner, have been on bail since April 22 when the father of the children, Ali Elamine, dropped his personal charges after Nine paid $US500,000. Since then there has been great uncertainty about the fate of Mr Whittington and his crew who, unlike Ms Faulkner, a jilted mother, command no public sympathy in Lebanon.

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Tara Brown, 60 Minutes crew still face jail in Lebanon over abduction

June 3, 2016

Source: theaustralian.com.au

Tara Brown and her 60 Minutes colleagues will likely face the same criminal charges in Lebanon as child retrieval expert Adam Whittington and his team, which could include jail time.

According to News Corp, all those associated with the attempted child kidnapping in Beirut – whether they “organised, financed, were drivers or made the kidnapping” – would face up to three years in jail in Lebanon if convicted, as their files have been combined by Lebanese authorities.

A decision on the charges was expected to be made this week but has been delayed, reportedly because an investigation finalised by Judge Abdullah is now being reassessed alongside new information from Channel Nine’s internal inquiry into the kidnapping. The five-page report was released publicly last Friday, and includes concessions by the network that mistakes were made in relation to the kidnapping attempt.

Judge Abdullah will hand the report to the prosecutor in coming days, then it will be at least 10 days before the prosecutor makes a decision and sends the report back to the judge to announce a ruling.

If Brown, producer Stephen Rice, cameraman Ben Williamson and sound recordist David Ballment are handed a jail sentence they can be extradited to Lebanon, unless the Office of the Attorney-General uses discretionary power to spare them. These decisions are made on a case to case basis. Even with a lesser penalty it would impact on the group’s ability to work and travel internationally.

Leaked emails obtained by News Corp yesterday reveal senior staff at 60 Minutes, including executive producer Kirsty Thomson, former executive producer and now Nine sports boss Tom Malone, and an in-house lawyer, were aware of the logistics of the planned kidnapping attempt as early as January, including the fact Adam Whittington and his child retrieval outfit CARI would be paid for their services.

 

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Parental abductions: 70 per cent of children suffer significant mental health effects, report finds

May 24, 2016

Source: abc.net.au

The fallout from the 60 Minutes child recovery saga in Lebanon last month has highlighted the consequences of parental abduction, but little is known about the impact on the children involved.

The most comprehensive study into the long-term effects of international child abduction found more than 70 per cent of the children involved reported suffering significant effects on their mental health.

British researcher and family law specialist Dr Marilyn Freeman conducted the study which was released last year.

She found children who had been abducted spoke repeatedly about their confusion, feelings of shame, self-hate, loneliness and insecurity.

The study concluded more must be done to protect children from parental abduction and its effects.

‘It was like something was taken from me’

Gaudi Rubio-Thorne would be the first to admit what happened to him more than 35 years ago had an enormous impact.

“It’s definitely influenced the way I think, the way I view the world, the way I interact with others,” he told 7.30.

In 1979, he was just a toddler, living in Launceston with his mother after his parents had separated, but just before Christmas, his Spanish-born father did not return him home after a day out.

His distraught mother, Kayleen Thorne, received a call the next morning.

“He was already in Spain. He said ,’Gaudi’s with me. He’s fine. We’re staying in Spain’,” Ms Thorne said.

She sprang into action. With a 60 Minutes crew along to film the operation, she raced to Spain to retrieve her child, well aware of the possible consequences.

“We would have been in jail, we would have been arrested immediately,” she said.

“We were frightened, but it’s something you do, it’s your mother instinct.”

Gaudi was successfully returned to his home in Tasmania, but says those events shaped his life.

“I had a lot of anger, especially in my teens,” he told 7.30.

“Substance abuse, definite abandonment issues. I love my mother very much but I take it out on her, take it out on my partners.

“Even though I was taken, it was like there was something that was taken from me.”

He describes his relationship with his father as broken.

“I’ve seen him three or four times when I was growing up, and when I was 17, I went to Spain and spent three or four months with him,” Gaudi said.

“But he wasn’t used to being a father and I wasn’t used to having one.”

‘It really is a lose-lose situation’

Hannah Engdahl is 15 and lives in Canada, but 10 years ago, she and younger sister Cedar were abducted by their father at the end of a three-week holiday with his family in Australia.

“It was the day after they were to return,” mother Melissa Engdahl explains.

“I got a call letting me know they wouldn’t be returning and that they had gone to the Middle East.”

Melissa Engdahl took legal action in three different countries to try to bring her daughters home, and eventually hired a team of ex-soldiers and went to retrieve them herself.

Hannah’s father now lives on the other side of the world and for legal reasons cannot come to visit them in Canada.

She misses having him around on a day-to-day basis.

“He wasn’t here for my school plays when I was in elementary school and he’s not here now and he probably won’t be here for my graduation, so I am missing out on really having him here and present in my life,” Hannah said.

“It really is a lose-lose situation when somebody parentally abducts,” her mother, Melissa, added.

“I think there is a lot of guilt for myself, just guilt that I can’t do more to have him more involved in their lives.”

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60 ‘stolen’ custody kids stuck overseas last year

April 25, 2016

Source: The Australian

Fewer than half of the 114 children taken from Australia during custody disputes in the past fin­ancial year have been returned, despite appropriate action having been taken under The Hague convention.

Figures from the Attorney-General’s Department show Brisbane mother Sally Faulkner’s case is one of many involving children removed from the country by one parent against the other’s will.

Of the 114 children removed from Australia, only 54 have been returned. A bill that would have criminalised the retention of children overseas in defiance of Family Court orders has been bouncing between parliament and the Senate’s legal and constitutional affairs committee for at least five years.

The Family Court can intervene only in cases pertaining to countries that are signatories to The Hague convention, which is why Lebanon — not a signatory — is often the country of choice for parents who want to flee. Such was the case with Ms Faulkner, whose children were taken to Lebanon by their Lebanese-American father, prompting Ms Faulkner to launch a botched counter-abduction with the assistance of the Nine Network’s 60 Minutes.

Foreign Prisoners Support Service director Martin Hodgson, who helped win journalist Peter Greste’s freedom in an Egyptian court case, said yesterday he had represented two Australian women whose husbands fled to Lebanon with their children. “Lebanon is a safe harbour for this issue (custody),” he said. “It’s much easier (for women) to get redress in Saudi on custody than it is in Lebanon.”

International parental child abduction has proven a difficult problem for Australian politicians since the issue first came before the Senate committee in August 2011. Debate about what to do has been going on for so long that five of the six senators who sat in on original committee hearings are no longer in parliament. The one who is — Michaelia Cash — was not available for comment yesterday on why reform had taken so long.

Mark Furner, who sat on the committee — he is now an MP in the Queensland parliament — said he still supported the new laws, which would have made it a crime for a parent not to return their child when ordered by the Family Court.

A spokesman for Attorney-General George Brandis said yesterday the government was “considering its recommen­dations and continues to consult with stakeholders”.

In the two weeks since the Faulkner case exploded, another two cases of parental abduction have come before the Family Court. In the first, a mother known only as Ms Padwa has been ordered to return her six-year-old daughter to the father, in The Netherlands. The child was born in The Netherlands, but raised partly in Indonesia. Her ­father is Dutch, her mother is ­Indonesian and the case came ­before the Australian Family Court only because the mother is now married to an Australian.

In a second case, the chief executive of an international company has been ordered to send his two sons back to Sydney from New York. The father, known in court documents as Mr Bondelmonte, flew the boys, aged 15 and 17, on a business-class trip to Manhattan in January, then wrote an email to his former wife saying they all wanted to stay.

The court heard the older boy was “estranged from his mother and, at his request, has not had any contact with her since the end of September 2013”. The court also saw emails from the younger boy saying he wanted to stay in New York because it’s “awesome”. The mother told the court she “struggled financially and could not compete with the largesse the children enjoyed with the father”.

The court found the father was “flouting the court’s order and even acting in a manner to challenge the court’s authority”.

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Beirut kidnap – The father knew they were coming

April 10, 2016

Source: the new daily

Nine ‘paid’ $115,000 for botched abduction

60 Minutes reporter Tara Brown and Aussie mum shackled together with handcuffs.

Concern is mounting for an Australian mother and Channel Nine crew detained in Lebanon after a botched child recovery operation.

Lebanese authorities say they have uncorroborated evidence Nine paid for the operation, which saw the children of Australian mother Sally Faulkner snatched off a Beirut street.

It appears to have been an attempt to get the children back to Australia after their Lebanese father, Ali el-Amien, took them to Lebanon last year and refused to let them return.

But four men accused of grabbing the children have been detained along with Ms Faulkner and a four-member crew from Chanel Nine, which was filming a story with her.

Authorities say they now have a signed statement from a member of the “recovery team” who says Nine paid $115,000 for the operation.

However, that statement is uncorroborated, the ABC has not seen it and cannot confirm the claim.

Next week, the police are expected to pass the investigatory brief onto the prosecutor.

At times during their detention, Nine reporter Tara Brown and Ms Faulkner have been kept shackled together with handcuffs.

At one point, although separated from Tara Brown, Ms Faulkner still had handcuffs dangling from one wrist.

Authorities say, despite earlier media reports, no firearms were recovered when the “recovery team” was detained.

Ms Faulkner has been desperate to get her children back to Australia.

Lebanon is not a party to an international agreement covering such disputes.

And Lebanese law, based on religion, is heavily stacked against the mother once children reach a certain age.

But Lebanese officials see the operation as a mix of arrogance and stupidity.

The area where the two children were grabbed in south Beirut is heavily patrolled and monitored by Hezbollah and Amal, two powerful Lebanese political and militia organisations.

The children’s grandmother says she was assaulted in the incident.

And the father’s family is politically connected.

His mother is a cousin of the speaker of Lebanon’s parliament, Nabih Berri.

He leads the Amal movement and has ready access to an enormous security apparatus, which includes control of ports and airports.

On top of that, Mr el-Amien told the ABC he knew, to a degree that they were coming because one of the children’s iPads still had access to Ms Faulkner’s email account and he saw messages detailing early discussion of the operation.

The ABC has not seen that email traffic.

Mr el-Amien claims he warned Ms Faulkner not to try to get the children back but did not let her know he had inside knowledge about her alleged plans.

While the route the children took each morning would have been easiest for the “recovery team” to check and re-check during surveillance, it is also in the midst of dense traffic and they were grabbed close to peak hour, making a complete getaway difficult.

Channel Nine has been contacted for comment.

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60 Minutes crew detained in Beirut paid $120,000 to a child recovery agency which ‘faked’ success stories on Facebook

April 7, 2016

Source: dailymail.co.uk

60 Minutes crew detained in Beirut paid $120,000 to a child recovery agency which ‘faked’ success stories on Facebook and whose operators have been arrested around the world.

• Channel 9 paid $120,000 to a ‘cut rate’ child recovery agency CARI
• CARI operatives have been arrested in other child recover cases
• One CARI commando is in Peru prison after ‘abducting’ selfie queen’s child
• The agency makes a fake claim on Facebook about a 2013 operation
• The Facebook photo is really a police rescue of a  lost family in Oregon

Channel 9 paid $120,000 to a child recovery agency whose operators were detained along with reporter Tara Brown and crew who were filming an operation in an international custody case in the Lebanese capital of Beirut.

Daily Mail Australia has learned that the man leading the operation to recover the six-year-old daughter and four-year-old son of Australian woman Sally Faulkner from the Beirut family of the children’s father Ali El Alamine was arrested two years ago in Singapore.

Former British police officer Adam Whittington, who runs Child Abduction Recovery International (CARI) and who is reportedly under police arrest in Beirut along with 60 Minutes’ Tara Brown and her crew, was jailed in Singapore 18 months ago over a child abduction case.

Whittington’s CARI agency also boasts on its Facebook page alongside a photograph of a woman and child in a helicopter which is claims to be a successful 2013 CARI child recovery operation in the Philippines.

The photograph is actually a 2006 Oregon, US police rescue of a mother who became lost with her daughters on a remote snowy mountain and had to be helicoptered out.

Another CARI operative, Kevin Critchley, is currently in a Peruvian prison following the alleged kidnap of a five-year-old girl in Lima last month. The girl’s father was also arrested.

The CARI agency has also allegedly made exaggerated claims about the number of former SAS soldiers it has working for it.

Daily Mail Australia understands that the mother in the Beirut case, Sally Faulkner, who is also known as Sally Clafinger, is not in custody with the 60 Minutes crew or the CARI operatives including Mr Whittington.

Ms Faulkner is believed to be have been taken to a safe house with her children, Lahela, 6, and Noah El Amine, 3, although it is unclear how she will get the children out of Lebanon and home to Australia without their passports.

But there are fears for the welfare of Ms Brown and her crew if local reports that the operation involved violence and weapons proved to be true.

Lebanese television station An-Nahar has reported the ‘recovery’ operation of Ms Faulkner’s children as a ‘kidnap’ by ‘four gunman’ driving a silver Hyundai and ‘abducting’ the boy and girl from their grandmother as they waited for the school bus.

Channel 9 released footage of the rescue operation on Thursday in which no weapons are visible.

An-Nahar reported that the gunmen ‘struck the grandmother Ibtisam El Amine on the head with a gun’ before taking the children from the outer Beirut suburb of Hadath on Wednesday.

The video does not show this, although the operatives are seen shoving people out of the way to get the children.

The 60 Minutes crew was in a car filming the recovery of Ms Faulkner’s children who is now in hiding with her young son and daughter.

The children’s father Ali El Amine and Ms Faulkner separated more than a year ago and Mr El Alamine flew to Lebanon with the children for a ‘holiday’ but failed to return them, telling his ex-wife via Skype that she ‘would never see them again’.

The operatives snatched the El Amine children from their paternal grandmother at a bus stop in the outer Beirut suburb of Hadath (pictured) on Wednesday morning as they waited for the school bus

CARI child recovery commando Kevin Critchley (pictured) was arrested in Peru last month after being detained over an ‘international kidnap plot’ to take the five-year-old daughter of Peruvian selfie queen Rose Chacón

Peruvian selfie queen Rose Chacón (pictured) took the girl Adrianna, 5, back to her native Peru from America claiming her husband had ‘inappropriately touched’ their daughter, but he reportedly hired a CARI commando for $280,00 to recover the girl

Ms Faulkner flew to Beirut to meet up with the CARI team, with Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes paying the $120,000 bill for her children’s recovery.

After taking the children from their grandmother at the bus stop, the CARI team handed them over to Ms Faulkner and she allegedly telephoned Mr El Amine and informed him that the children were with her.

Mr El Amine is reported to have then informed police that his children had been abducted and he was concerned they would be taken out of the country and to Australia.

It is unclear as to who has made claims that there were weapons used in the operation and that Mr El Amine’s mother was pistol whipped.

International child abduction recovery specialists CARI reportedly charged 60 Minutes $120,000 to recover the EL Amine children, but were arrested along with Tara Brown and her crew

All those detained were still in police custody on Thursday morning as Beirut officers investigated the validity of reports that weapons were used and an assault had taken place.

The Nine Network told Daily Mail Australia they were not commenting on the incident other than they were concerned for the welfare of Brown and her crew and were ‘working with authorities to get them released and back home as soon as possible’.

Adam Whittington and his firm CARI have made several controversial child recovery operations previously and the agency has made claims they had up to ten former SAS soldiers on their books.

Last month, Peruvian police arrested CARI operator Kevin Critchley after he was reportedly paid $280,000 to intervene in the custody battle between a Peruvian selfie queen and her American husband.

Sally Faulkner, pictured with her ex-husband Ali El Amine with their child in happier times, hired a child recovery agency to retrieve her children from Beirut and they are now in hiding with the operatives and 60 Minutes in police custody

The boss of the child abduction recovery agency CARI Adam Whittignton (pictured) was also arrested in 2014 in Singapore following an elaborate plot to recover a British woman’s son and served 16 weeks’ prison

Sally Faulkner, pictured with her ex-husband Ali El Amine, now has to make her way out of Lebanon with her two children following the operation which led to Lebanese police arresting reporter Tara Brown

Critchley, 35, reportedly a former British commando, is in custody with Dustin Kent in a Lima prison after they allegedly plotted to snatch back Mr Kent’s five-year-old daughter Adrianna from the girl’s mother, Rose Chacón.

The men are being held for allegedly being part of an ‘international kidnap plot’ to take back Adrianna, after Ms Chacón took the girl to her native Peru from America claiming her husband had ‘inappropriately touched’ their daughter.

Mr Critchley, a self-employed ‘close protection operative and freelance surveillance operator’, was believed to have been working for CARI on the operation.

The two El Amine children (pictured) were living with their father and being cared for by their grandmother when they were grabbed of a Beirut street

In September 2014, the London Telegraph reported that CARI’s chief operator Adam Whittington was jailed in Singapore after a foiled attempt to snatch a two-year-old boy back on behalf of his mother.

The boy’s London-based mother, 30, was also sent to prison. The mother had been in the process of divorcing her husband and had gained UK custody of the child, but her ex-partner took out a Singaporean order preventing his son’s removal from the country.

Whittington reportedly chartered a catamaran, then hired a taxi and went to the boy’s grandparents’ house where he allegedly put the grandfather in a headlock.

Whittington, the mother and another man involved in the elaborate plot were arrested the following day.

He was sentenced to 16 weeks prison for criminal assault, voluntarily causing hurt and illegal entry into Singapore.

CARI’s Facebook site features a photograph of a woman in a rescue helicopter clutching an infant on her lap

The caption written beside it says ‘Landed safely back home in Australia, 2 children abducted over 12 months ago into the Philippines. One VERY happy family waiting at Sydney airport after CARI recovered both children safely from horrible living and health conditions.

‘When the courts, lawyers and authorities could and would do nothing, CARI did.’

The photo is actually a picture of San Francisco mother Kati Kim, 30, who in December 2006, CBS News reported, was photographed with her seven-month old, Sabine Kim, after they were rescued by police in Oregon.

Ms Kim, husband James, Sabine, and daughter Penelope, 4, became lost during a family vacation to a remote Oregon mountain in winter.

James Kim set out to look for help when the family became stranded and was never found. Police airlifted a relieved Ms Kim and her daughters from the scene in a helicopter to the nearest hospital where they were reported to be in ‘good’ condition.

 On its Facebook post beside the photograph of Ms Kim and her daughter, CARI wrote ‘Welcome home kids from all the team at CARI. CARI – Second to None’.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted the CARI agency for a response.

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