A Toledo woman is stepping up an international fight to get back her U.S.-born son, taken from her by her ex-husband in Oman in 2006.

Mohamed Jaafar, allegedly taken away from his mother by his father in 2006.

Mary Hariri, with the help of the U.S. State Department, the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, has been working to get the Omani government to help her regain contact with her six-year-old son Mohamed Jaafar, who she hasn’t seen since he was three.
She’s written a lengthy letter addressed to the sultan of the gulf state and various international human rights organizations telling her story in an official request to meet with the Omani leader and have her son returned to her.

Omani religious leader Hilal Jaafar, while married to Hariri in 2004, was arrested in Toledo on domestic violence charges, one of several criminal complaints filed against him for beating his wife.

Hilal Jaafar

Jaafar posted bond and fled the country.
“He left me with the three kids. Honestly, I was happy at that time,” said Hariri, after showing several scars on her neck and hands she said were left by Jaafar’s attacks.

In the fall of 2005, Hariri, a U.S. citizen, took her children on a trip to her native Lebanon, and was surprised there by a visit from her estranged husband after a year and half of no contact with him.

She said Jaafar apologized endlessly for his treatment of her and implored her to go with him on a religious pilgrimage to Mecca.

“I forgave him. I don’t know whey I made that decision,” she said. “He swore to me at the Kaaba (the holiest of religious sites for Muslims) that he’d never beat me… I trusted him and I went to Oman in November, 2005.”

Hariri became pregnant there and when she wanted to return to the U.S. for medical treatment because of a severe heart problem that would complicate the pregnancy, Jaafar refused to allow her to take the children back with her, and began beating her again, according to Hariri.

She said that as she became more determined to take the children and return to the U.S., her husband became more abusive, and one day grabbed their son Mohamed by the shirt, told Hariri she’d never see him again unless she’d sign over custody and drove off with the boy.

“The last words my child said to me were ‘Mama wait for me. Mama wait for me,'” Hariri said.

She said the child banging on a window of the car he was driven away in is the last image she has of her son.

In January of 2006, with the help of the American embassy there, she escaped Oman with her two young daughters.

She has since divorced Jaafar with three different kinds of civil and religious documentation and sought help from the State Department and other U.S. entities, which have provided counselers, lawyers and other resources to communicate with Omani officials in trying to regain custody or visitation of her son.

The Omani government has not yet responded to requests for comment.

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children case worker Rami Zahr said Hariri’s case is complicated by the fact that Oman is not a signatory to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

“The Hague Convention is an effective civil mechanism for left behind parents to petition courts overseas,” Zahr said. “With Oman, unfortunately, there is no treaty… For the Middle East, it’s a lot more difficult.”

He said U.S. officals involved in the case have to rely on diplomatic efforts to try to make contact with Jaafar.

He said the Virginia-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which provides resources to families and law enforcement in kidnapping cases, is working closely with the State Department and the FBI to facilitate communication with Omani officials and the father.

He said Jaafar hasn’t been in hiding and while he isn’t totally ignoring communication, he hasn’t been responding to appeals.

“The idea is to hopefully reach an agreement with him,” he said. “We know he’s in Oman. Often times the question in these cases is that the child is legally missing, not physically missing… We know where the child is, but the child shouldn’t be there.”

Hariri hopes the letter to the Omani sultan and international groups, along with media reports and several Arab World television interviews she’s done will have an effect on the case.

She said she shied away from media at first, but she decided that if she never reunites with her son, the news articles will always stand as proof that she never gave up.

“When he sees them when he’s older, he can see that I didn’t leave him,” she said.

“For three and a half years, I’ve been asking to see my son. This is not fair. I’m not gonna quit. I want my son.”

According to medical documents, Hariri is in need of open heart surgery, but she refuses to undergo it before she gets her son back.

“I won’t do it, even if I die, before I see my son,” she said.