Beirut – 20 April 2016
1. Van carrying three male members of Australian TV crew arriving at women’s prison to pick up female journalist Tara Brown and Australian mother Sally Faulkner
2. Various of TV crew inside vehicle
3. Cameramen filming inside van
4. Exterior of courthouse entrance
5. Lawyer Joe Karam on his phone
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Joe Karam, Lawyer representing two British nationals:
“They came here based on instructions from Channel 9, who paid for their trip and let’s say program or plan, and they were altogether arrested in this case of child abduction. My client believed that he was assisting a mother to help get back her children. She had a court order from Australia.”
6. Karam typing on his phone.
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Joe Karam, Lawyer representing two British nationals:
“I would have preferred that Channel 9 to push and include in their settlement the people they paid to help them in this process, in this plan.”
8. Photographer
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Joe Karam, Lawyer representing two British nationals:
“We have presented a demand today. Tomorrow it will be examined by the prosecution department and we are hopeful that they will be released on bail. We will have also negotiations tomorrow, according to the judge, with the plaintiff.”
10. Various of lawyer walking to his car and getting in
Storyline
An Australian mother and TV crew were released on bail in Beirut on Wednesday where they were detained after a botched attempt to take the woman’s two children from their Lebanese father.
Ali al-Amin, the father of the two children, aged 3 and 5, said he dropped attempted kidnapping charges against his estranged Australian wife Sally Faulkner and the Channel 9 television crew, because he “didn’t want the kids to think I was keeping their mother in jail”.
Faulkner and the four-person TV crew, led by prominent Australian TV journalist Tara Brown, hugged each other outside a jail in Baabda, a Beirut suburb, before they were driven off in a white minivan.
A lawyer representing two British nationals detained in the high-profile child custody battle said on Wednesday that he was hopeful they would be released on bail tomorrow.
Lawyer Joe Karam says Channel 9 hired his clients, Adam Whittington and Craig Michael, who are employees of CARI (Child Abduction Recovery International) and should have included them on the agreement made today.
