'He circumcised my son without asking': Mother reveals true extent of Beirut abduction
The mother behind Channel Nine’s botched Beirut child abduction has revealed her ex-husband secretly circumcised their three-year-old son.
While waiting in a Lebanese safe house, Sally Faulkner said that she discovered the child’s father, Ali Elamine, performed the religious procedure without her knowledge or consent.
"That was a complete shock," she told Australian Women’s Weekly.
"It was all I could do not to cry. How could Ali do that without letting me know, without discussing it? It was just another reason to detest the man who’d taken our children.”
Joined by a 60 Minutes news crew, getaway drivers and hired kidnappers, Ms Faulkner planned to snatch six-year-old Lahela and four-year-old Noah from the care of their unsuspecting grandmother and their maid as they walked to their Lebanese school in April this year.
The Brisbane mother said that her children longed to be reunited with her and that was reason enough to undertake the brazen abduction plot.
The planned kidnapping back flipped when everyone involved was arrested on allegations of child abduction. The Nine Network were reportedly forced to pay a substantial financial settlement to Mr Elamine for their freedom.
“Absolutely I would do it again," Ms Faulkner said.
"With the greatest respect to Lebanon and its legal system, with the greatest respect to Ali and his family, I would do it again if it meant that I could have my children back with me. Any mother would do the same, I believe."
Earlier this month the hired getaway driver Khaled Barbour said that if the army had shot at the car as Ms Faulkner and the news crew sped away “no one would have gotten out alive”.
"The kids were yelling and screaming, and the foreigners were yelling."
With the distressed children in the car, panic set in for Mr Barbour as witnesses to the abduction began running towards the car.
"I saw people running, neighbourhood folk, I think, running at the car," he said. "It was my fear that got me out of there."
