Lebanon detains Australian TV crew over child custody row

07 Tháng Tư, 2016 | World News

Australian journalist Tara Brown and her crew were reportedly detained in Beirut,
Lebanon, late Wednesday. In this photo, heavy traffic fills the streets in downtown
Beirut, Dec. 19, 2012. (Photo: Reuters)

 

BEIRUT/SYDNEY – Lebanese police have detained an Australian film crew and accused them of involvement in a kidnapping of two children from their Lebanese father on behalf of their Australian mother.

The Nine network said Canberra was urgently trying to confirm the reporters’ whereabouts. It added that the crew was working for the current affairs show 60 minutes.

Local media has named those held as reporter Tara Brown, producer Steven Rice and one or two camera operators.

The Brisbane mother of the children reportedly involved in the filming had said their Lebanese father took them for a holiday and then allegedly refused to return them to Australia, Fairfax Media reported.

Meanwhile, CCTV footage broadcast on Lebanese TV appeared to show the two children, who the father said were aged five and three, being bundled into a car by several attackers on a busy street in southern Beirut. The children’s grandmother told media she had been hit on the head with a pistol during the abduction.

The father, Ali Zeid al-Amin, said by phone that he was scared for the children’s safety but that they were with their mother. “It’s their mum that kidnapped them, and that’s what we know. She contacted me and told me she has the kids,” he said.

A Lebanese security source said the mother and two children had been found and were with the authorities.

The incident took place in the Hadath area of southern Beirut late on Wednesday.

Lebanon, unlike Australia, is not a signatory of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which allows for children normally resident in one location to be returned if taken by a relative.

Lebanese Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk was quoted as saying the crew were “involved in abducting the two children and detained in respect of their participation in the kidnapping operation”.

It is the second time an Australian television crew has been detained overseas in recent weeks after two Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalists were held in Malaysia for trying to question Prime Minister Najib Razak about multiple scandals swirling around him.

They were soon released and deported.

– with other agencies