Mum gives up custody to win release
The children of the Brisbane woman at the centre of the Lebanon child abduction case will not be able to visit their mum in Australia for years.
Sally Faulkner and a 60 Minutes TV crew’s release after two weeks in a Beirut prison on child abduction charges has come at a cost: Faulkner gave up custody of the two children in a deal reportedly secured by the Nine Network paying a large sum to her estranged husband Ali Elamine.
Reporter Tara Brown and her colleagues quickly left Lebanon after their release on Wednesday, while Faulkner remains in Beirut to see Lahela, 5, and Noah, 3.
Sources said a substantial figure was paid to Elamine in exchange for him dropping charges against Faulkner and the TV crew, who still face the prospect of criminal charges.
Elamine said he had not received ‘‘a dime’’ but left open the possibility.
‘‘I wouldn’t mind if they would cough up something, but I never signed on anything or never communicated anything regarding money or anything like that.
‘‘My only concern was to get the custody of the kids,’’ he said.
Judge Rami Abdullah said Elamine would bring the children to his chambers today to see their mother.
Elamine said his estranged wife could have access to the children, but only in Lebanon.
‘‘It sucks, the whole sucks. No-one wins here.
‘‘I told Sally she can come and go as she wants.’’
He said he would not let the children visit their mother in Australia ‘‘at the moment’’, saying he wanted things to settle down.
‘‘Then maybe a few years down the line, yeah, why not?‘‘
Elamine believes he was deliberately lured away on April 6, the day of the abduction operation.
He said a client insisted on a 7am surf lesson, leaving his elderly mother to walk the children to school.
‘‘They did a run on Tuesday thing and saw me with the kids, and it never went through, because they figured I’d fight back,’’ he said.
Faulkner, who has a threemonth-old baby with her current partner, said she was glad to be out of jail.
‘‘It’s just the uncertainty that sort of kept me awake at night, not knowing if it was going to be a lifelong sentence or what.’’
Brown, producer Stephen Rice, cameraman Ben Williamson and sound recordist David Ballment flew to Dubai en route to Sydney.
‘‘It’s great to be going home,’’ Brown said.
Nine would review what went wrong and why systems designed to protect staff failed, chief executive Hugh Marks said.
‘‘At no stage did anyone from Nine or 60 Minutes intend to act in any way that made them susceptible to charges that they breached the law or to become part of the story that is Sally’s story,’’ he said. ‘‘But we did become part of the story, and we shouldn’t have.’’
Faulkner’s lawyer Ghassan Moghabghab said the Nine crew had helped to pay the child recovery company involved.
‘‘They wanted to get the scoop, and they paid everything to help Sally try to reach her children.’’
Adam Whittington, the Australian-Briton alleged to have headed up the child recovery operation, and his British colleague Craig Michael remain in jail, as do two Lebanese associates.