NOTES ON LEBANON AND CHILD ABDUCTION

By Jeremy D. Morley

Return of children abducted to or in Lebanon

• There are extreme difficulties in returning a child to the United States from Lebanon when retained by a Lebanese parent.
• Lebanon is not a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.
• There are no extradition treaties between Lebanon and the United States.
• Under Lebanese law, Lebanese nationals may prevent their wives and children (even if they are American citizens) from leaving Lebanon.
• Lebanon does not recognize international parental kidnapping as a crime.
• Issues of child custody and divorce in Lebanon are generally decided in religious courts under religious law. Thus, if the father is a Sunni Muslim and the mother is a Christian the custody of their children will normally be decided by a Sunni Muslim court.
• One might petition a civil court to handle a custody case instead of a religious court. The issue would be whether the religious court has jurisdiction. It could take up to two years to have the civil court assume jurisdiction and a minimum of four to five years to have the case decided.
• Among Sunni Muslims, the father has physical custody of a daughter over the age of nine and of a boy over the age of seven. For Shia Muslims the father generally has physical custody at for boys at age 2 and for girls at age 7.
• If a father establishes that the mother is unfit or lacking good moral character, she will lose any right to the child. Muslim law requires a child to be raised in the Muslim faith, and if it were proven that a mother tried to raise the child as a Christian, she could be found unfit.
• Lebanon does not recognize dual nationality. American/Lebanese dual nationals who carry Lebanese papers will be treated as Lebanese nationals by security authorities.
• A child who is a dual American and Lebanese citizen would be bound by Lebanese law in the eyes of the Lebanese civil courts.
• The U.S. State Department cannot offer any real assistance even if there were a United States court order directing the return of the child from Lebanon.

NO PHONES OR LAWYERS FOR ALLEGED ABDUCTORS

By Ambassador Maura Harty

An Australian and a New Zealander held on child abduction charges in Lebanon (2007) say they have been almost completely isolated for the two weeks since their arrest, with little or no access to lawyers. "We don't know what's going on in the world, or even with our case," said Brian Corrigan, 38, a former soldier from Wollongong. "We've heard nothing from our families. There are no phones in here or ways to send a message."

The men said that, pending legal advice, they could not discuss details of the December 21 swoop in which they and two other New Zealanders allegedly helped Canadian mother Melissa Hawach retrieve her abducted children from their father, Australian-Lebanese businessman Joseph Hawach. The two men were taken from a plane they had boarded at Beirut airport after police identified them from copies of their passport taken when they hired cars and a hotel room.

They face up to three years of hard labour on charges of abducting and/or aiding the abduction of minors aged under 18. Family law in Lebanon automatically recognises the custody rights of the girls' Lebanese father, irrespective of Canadian court orders granting custody to their mother and the international arrest warrants pending against him for the girls' abduction from Sydney last July.

Local legal sources say that as a Lebanese citizen Mr. Hawach cannot be extradited to any foreign country, regardless of what crimes he is accused of. Asked about the alleged abduction in Beirut, Corrigan said only that if he had to do it again, he would do it differently. "I wouldn't get caught," he said. "We knew we were leaving a paper trail but we went ahead with it. We felt we had to go ahead."

Corrigan said he had not received any money for the alleged task. He did not know the whereabouts of Ms. Hawach and her daughters, Hannah, 5, and Cedar, 2, but "if you ask me they're outside the country already."