Father of woman held in Syria ‘in heaven’ knowing she’s safe
‘WELCOMED’ ON ATTEMPT TO BRING SONS THROUGH SYRIA
The father of a Chatham woman kidnapped with a friend and held by a terrorist group while trying to secret her two sons out of Lebanon says he’s “in heaven” now that she’s safe.
“I will sleep better,” Ben Bimbachi said Tuesday, knowing his daughter Jolly Bimbachi is no longer a captive in Syria.
Bimbachi had been held by Syrian terrorist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, along with Sean Moore of Chatham, who was with her when they tried to cross the border from Lebanon into Syria, trying to take her two young sons with them.
Freed earlier this week, the duo crossed from Syria into Turkey on Monday with the help of Global Affairs Canada. The children were not with them.
Bimbachi, who was trying to arrange for a flight home for his daughter Tuesday, said he still doesn’t know when she or Moore will leave Turkey.
Some of what the Southwestern Ontario duo endured was revealed in video interviews published Tuesday that told of trying to hook up with smugglers to help them get out of Syria and into Turkey.
Instead, the mission went sideways in war-torn Syria, one of the world’s most dangerous countries, and turned into a one-month odyssey of being moved around and ultimately held in “protective custody” by an al- Qaida affiliate, with the two boys sent back to Lebanon.
Moore, in the video interviews published by SITE Intelligence Group, called it being “politely kidnapped.” Bimbachi, who said he spoke to his daughter Monday at the Canadian embassy in Turkey, shared other details.
He said it began late last year, in what he called a state of desperation, after she lost a legal battle in Lebanon to bring her two sons Omar, 9, and Abdel-Ghaniy, 7, back to Canada, Jolly Bimbachi decided to flee with the help of Moore. They entered Syria with the goal to reach Turkey and fly back to Canada.
Last November, the Chatham woman flew to Lebanon to see her sons for the first time since their father took them to the Middle Eastern country in May 2015 and didn’t return.
Ben Bimbachi said his daughter and grandchildren, and Moore, spent the first four or five days of captivity moving among three different groups in Syria.
He said the groups had suspicions about her, but that she told them the truth about a court ruling in Lebanon that she had to stay in the country if she wanted to have access to her kids.
Bimbachi said he communicated with some of the men, noting one contacted him and offered to marry his daughter.
Bimbachi said they were moved from house to house at first. Then, he said, six armed members of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham arrived with a tank and apprehended a man who had his daughter and grandchildren and Moore in his home. From there, they took them to Idlib, about 30 kilometres from the Turkish border. Bimbachi said it was while being held by Hay’at Tahir al-Sham that his daughter’s children were returned to their father.
Canadians Jolly Bimbachi and Sean Moore had no trouble crossing the border from Lebanon into Syria with Bimbachi’s two sons, but their plan went off the rails almost as soon as they entered the war-torn country.
In video interviews with a rebel-embedded commentator released by SITE Intelligence Group on Tuesday, Bimbachi and Moore detail how a bid to secure Bimbachi custody of her boys from a Lebanese court ended in kidnapping.
Moore said their plan to drive the roughly 200 kilometres through western Syria into Turkey derailed after they crossed the border and met the smugglers who were supposed to transport them.
“It was not supposed to be walking, driving, motorcycles, driving, vans, walking, motorcycles,” Moore told Bilad Abdul Kareem of On the Ground News. “It just kept going and going — all these safe houses … As soon as the walking started, I knew something wasn’t right, but we’re already in Syria. We can’t just turn around. We don’t know where we are, so we just keep on moving forward until we got here.”
The journey would take more than a month and would involve what Moore called being “politely kidnapped” by the smugglers and “protective custody” by an al-Qaida affiliate.
It ended with her sons being returned to their father in Lebanon.
Bimbachi and Moore had travelled from their homes in Chatham, Ont., to Lebanon in November to pursue a legal effort to gain custody of Bimbachi’s sons, Omar, 9, and seven-year-old Abdel-Ghaniy. She says her estranged husband took the boys on a vacation to visit family in Lebanon in 2015 and never returned.
“I came to Lebanon to see my babies. I have been a victim of parental kidnapping,” she told Abdul Kareem.
She said it became apparent the Lebanese courts “favour men over women,” so she and Moore — a friend who does humanitarian work — hatched their plan to take the boys out through Syria.
“We decided to come into Syria, and hopefully from Syria we’ll cross over to Turkey, and then in Turkey we’ll go to the Canadian embassy and the Canadian embassy will help us,” she said.
Moore said he did not realize it at the time, but by the second day inside Syria they were prisoners. “We were welcomed. We were fed. We didn’t know that we had actually been taken, but again as I now understood it we were kidnapped — just politely kidnapped,” Moore said.
The al-Qaida-linked Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — Levant Liberation Committee — later took over their custody, but the Canadians had only good things to say about the group.
“I don’t know how the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham got involved. I think it’s a good thing they did,” Bimbachi said. “They came and they got us. I spent a few nice nights with my boys before they took them back to Lebanon.”
Bimbachi and Moore were then driven north to Idlib, near the Turkish border and seat of the opposition Syrian government. Moore said they were held there for about 30 days.
“The HTS kept me safe and made sure that there was a safe time to release me. I believe they talked to my embassy in Canada, thank you very much for that, and they talked to their contacts at the borders and checkpoints and in Turkey,” he said.
He said he has learned from the ordeal that “there are not shortcuts to anything nowadays. You have to do everything proper even if it takes a long time.” He also said he was horrified by Bashar al-Assad regime’s deliberate bombing of civilians.
At a news conference in Syria Monday announcing their release, Moore said the attempts to resolve the custody dispute started “going in a bad direction, and I can’t go into detail, but there is a serious reason why things went sideways the way they did and we ended up in Syria.
“Now we’re hoping that we can work on the legalities of what’s happened and why it went sideways, and all of the truth of will come out eventually.”
Asked if she had anything to tell her boys should they see the video, Bimbachi choked up.
“I love them,” she said. “My only dream right now is to raise my boys and unite them with their sister, who is still in Canada.”
IT WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE WALKING, DRIVING, MOTORCYCLES, DRIVING, VANS, WALKING, MOTORCYCLES.