Tara Brown and TV Crew Detained in Lebanon

A film crew from Channel Nine’s current affairs program 60 Minutes, including journalist Tara Brown, has been detained during a botched attempt to recover two Australian children in Beirut.

Brown has been in Lebanon with producer Steven Rice and a cameraman, reporting on an operation to recover Brisbane woman Sally Faulkner’s two children from her ex husband Ali Elamine.

Mr Elamine took the two children, five-year-old Lahela and two-year-old Noah for a holiday in May last year, which Ms Faulkner says she believed would only be for a short period of time. Mr Elamine subsequently refused to return the children.

She then made a number of appeals for assistance to help recovering the children from Beirut, including asking the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to help.  As Lebanon is not a party to the Hague Convention on international child abduction, there was nothing that could be done at that level.

Extraction From Lebanon

According to Fairfax Media, the TV crew were with Ms Faulker in Beirut to film an operation by an international child-recovery agency trying to take the children back. Fairfax says that the recovery operation was successful in separating the children from Mr Elamine’s mother, but after Ms Faulker and the children excaped to a safe house, police located the 60 Minutes crew, the recovery agency employees and local security to interview them.

Beirut media reports are describing the incident as a kidnapping involving three gunmen who snatched the children as they waited at a bus stop with their grandmother.

News.com.au reports a Nine Network spokesman saying:  “We can confirm a crew from 60 Minutes has been detained in Beirut. We won’t be giving out any more details, other than to say we are working with authorities to get them released and back home ASAP.”

Foreign Affairs minister Julie Bishop said in a statement she is working to help the crew.

“I confirm that DFAT has been in contact with Channel 9 with regard to reports that an Australian TV crew has been detained in Lebanon,” she said.

“We are urgently seeking to confirm the crew’s whereabouts and welfare, and have offered all appropriate consular assistance”.

Ms Faulker is reportedly in hiding with her children until they are able to leave Lebanon and return to Brisbane.