by scmp.com – An Australian media outlet on Thursday
launched an internal investigation into its involvement in a bungled
attempt to take an Australian woman’s children from their Lebanese
father, shortly after the woman and the Australian TV crew were released
on bail from a Beirut jail in a dramatic climax to the international
child custody battle.
Hugh Marks, CEO of Australia’s Channel Nine,
said the company would conduct a review to determine what went wrong and
why the channel failed in its duty to protect its four-person 60 Minutes team, which was in Lebanon to cover Australian mother Sally Faulkner’s bid to get her two young children back.
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,” Marks said in a statement. “But we did become part of the story
and we shouldn’t have.”
The release of Faulkner and the TV crew came
after Faulkner’s estranged husband and the father of their two children,
Ali al-Amin, announced he had dropped attempted kidnapping charges
against the five because he “didn’t want the kids to think I was keeping
their mother in jail”.
Lawyers and the judge involved in the case would not comment about whether any compensation was involved.
Faulkner and the crew left a jail in Baabda, a
Beirut suburb, in a white van, escorted by an Australian Embassy car.
Once inside the vehicle they embraced one another.
“I’m just so glad to be out of there,” Faulkner told Channel Nine in an interview filmed inside the van.
Their release was the latest in an international
saga that included a controversial “child recovery agency” and gripped
headlines in Australia and the Middle East.
The five Australians are implicated in the
operation to seize the children from al-Amin two weeks ago. Two Britons
and two Lebanese have also been charged, and they remain in jail.
Faulkner has previously said al-Amin moved the
children, aged three and five, from Australia to Lebanon without her
permission. On Wednesday, she surrendered any custody claims in Lebanon
as part of a deal struck with al-Amin in front of a judge, her lawyer
said.
“She will accept that the children will stay
with their father,” said the attorney, Ghassan Moughabhab, who
acknowledged that al-Amin had received a judgment earlier in his favour
from a Lebanese religious court. “Taking into consideration the Lebanese
law, he’s in the right.”
The scandal has been a public relations disaster
for Channel Nine, which has faced intense backlash in Australia from
the public and the media. Many have questioned the station’s ethics for
involving itself in a criminal act and over accusations the channel
funded the child-snatching operation.
60 Minutes has a long history of paying
sources for interviews, but the head of the child recovery agency said
Channel Nine went much further in this case, directly paying his company
to finance the operation. Nine has declined to comment on the
allegation.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull
expressed relief at the release of Faulkner and the crew and thanked
Lebanese authorities for their help, but issued a warning to Australians
travelling overseas.
“All Australians, regardless of what they do or
who they work for, should recognise that when they are outside of
Australia, they must obey the laws of the country in which they are
visiting,” Turnbull told reporters.
Al-Amin said he would raise the children in
Lebanon and would allow Faulkner to visit them. Faulkner is expected to
meet Ali and their children at the courthouse Thursday, before leaving
the country the day after.
Investigative Judge Rami Abdullah said the state
still has to review whether to drop public charges against the
suspects, but added that Faulkner and the journalists were free to leave
Lebanon once they posted bail. They will be expected to return to
Lebanon to stand trial if the public charges are not dropped, he said.
Others detained in the case were still behind
bars. British-Australian Adam Whittington, who heads the Britain-based
agency Child Abduction Recovery International and is alleged to have
masterminded the operation, remains jailed, along with another Briton,
Greg Michael.
Their lawyer said their outcomes should be tied to the fate of the TV crew.
“Both of them came here based on instructions from Channel 9, who paid for their program,” said the attorney, Joe Karam.
According to Whittington, Channel Nine deposited over A$100,000 in fees to his agency’s account to finance the operation.
