Four members of the crew, from the Nine Network’s 60 Minutes program, were among nine people detained last week, Lebanese Internal Security said.
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At least nine people, including a former UK-based detective turned “child recovery specialist”, an Australian “60 Minutes” TV crew and an Australian woman accused of an attempted kidnapping of her two children have been charged in Lebanon with crimes that carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison and hard labour.
POLITICAL intervention had been touted as offering a solution whereby Tara Brown, her 60 Minutes crew and the Brisbane mother whose children they were trying to “rescue” could be released.
Lebanese police says the children were later found and returned their father, Ali al Amin, who, according to Faulkner, took their children from Australia to Lebanon and refused to return them.
An Australian woman arrested in Beirut last week for allegedly abducting her two young children from her ex-husband is “being treated right” by Lebanese authorities, her current partner said Monday.
The custody dispute between Ms Faulkner and her ex-husband, Ali al-Amin, has reportedly been going on for several years.
Sally Faulkner with her children Lahela aged 6 years (centre) and Noah aged 4 years.
The judge is not viewing the case as child abduction but as a case of a mother attempting to reunite with her children, according to ABC journalist Matt Brown who is reporting from the Lebanon Palace of Justice.
In a change.org petition posted previous year, Faulkner pleaded with Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to intervene in the case.
A judicial source told AFP that the four-person crew from Channel Nine’s “60 Minutes” programme were among those charged.
The 60 Minutes crew has been detained on child snatching charges and is presently in a behind-closed-doors meeting with a Lebanese judge.
“We are co-operating fully with the Lebanese authorities and it is important to stress that we respect the laws of Lebanon and its judiciary”, said a spokesperson in a statement.
“If any agreement will happen between them … it will help the case … for all of them”, he said.
Channel Nine has maintained its crew was not connected to the recovery team that grabbed the children, and they were filming the incident when they were detained.
The children were seen to be snatched by a group of men from their Lebanese grandmother while walking along a Beirut street and bundled in to a auto.
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Mr Turnbull said officials were doing “everything we can” to support the arrested Australians. The friend says she searched for the emergency number to the Department of Foreign Affairs and gave it to Faulkner.
