Child recovery bid ‘sabotaged’
THE man jailed over Channel Nine’s botched kidnapping scandal is writing a tellall book exposing how the Lebanon job was sabotaged.
Child recovery expert Adam Whittington, whose mother lives on the Gold Coast, said he would also detail his gruelling time in inhumane jails.
He said one was controlled by terror group ISIS and another was an immigration detention centre so full that inmates “spoon” together on the floor to sleep.
Tasked by Brisbane mother Sally Faulkner to steal back her two children in Beirut from estranged husband Ali Elamine in 2016, which was to be shown on 60 Minutes, he said his book would dismiss myths about the operation.
“It wasn’t botched whatsoever,” Mr Whittington said, adding he took full responsibility for its failure.
“There is factual evidence to show it was sabotaged, end of story. Somebody tipped Ali off, it came out of Ali’s mouth the first night in the police station when I was detained, (he said) ‘you got played by such and such, he emailed me this information’.
He had two to three pieces of paper in his hand, waving it.”
Mr Whittington, a former soldier who founded Child Abduction Recovery International (CARI), said he believed Mr Elamine told police who was responsible after his team kidnapped the children in the morning.
While preparing a boat to escape he said Ms Faulkner and her children remained in a safe house but police arrested him in the afternoon, along with the 60 Minutes crew and Ms Faulkner.
“Some people say what would you do differently?” he said. “I say nothing.”
The book would detail almost four months in jail, he said.
Mr Whittington said the TV station bought the captain of a detention centre a coffee maker and, when he walked past in chains and shackles, saw crew members sitting uncuffed on a lounge drinking coffee. On another occasion the captain organised pizza for the crew, he said.
The television crew and Ms Faulkner were released about two weeks after their arrest with US$500,000 paid by Channel Nine to Mr Elamine to drop charges.
Despite paying Mr Whittington more than $100,000 for the rescue mission, Channel Nine did not help pay for his release.
Mr Whittington said he was shown a front page picture of the crew members and Ms Faulkner smiling upon their release, which would always stay with him.
He said he was “living with rats” while the Channel Nine crew was pictured drinking champagne while on a plane in first class.
After the TV crews left he said he spent six weeks in “a dungeon” with no windows or lights, followed by an ISIScontrolled prison in Tripoli, in north Lebanon, for a week.
He was also taken to immigration holding cells that he described as inhumane.
He said he still had not been technically charged and there had not been a trial.