Australian TV network opens investigation into Lebanese kidnapping debacle
Lawyers and the judge involved in the case would not comment about whether any compensation was involved.
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.
We did become part of the story and we shouldn’t have
“It is important to reiterate that at no stage did anyone from Nine or 60 Minutes 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.
