Belgian girls plead to leave Iran

The BBC ^ | December 3, 2003

[RWR8189]

The Belgian Government hopes it can count on good ties with Iran

Two young girls with joint Belgian and Iranian nationality have taken refuge in the Belgian embassy in Tehran in a bid to be allowed to return to Europe.

The girls - aged 14 and six - say they were taken to Iran by their father after their parents' divorce and want to return to their mother in Belgium.

They escaped from his house on Tuesday and took a taxi to the embassy.

Belgium has offered them its "total protection" but is seeking to avoid a row with Iran.

I am prepared to leave for Iran in a second in order to negotiate a humane end to this situation Louis Michel

It issued an international arrest warrant for the father on charges of kidnapping after he took Yasmine Pourhashemi and her younger sister Sara to Iran following a holiday in Greece in August of this year.

Foreign Minister Louis Michel said he was prepared to go to Iran to help and was trying to contact his Iranian counterpart, Kamal Kharrazi, in an attempt to resolve the dispute.

"We absolutely owe these kids total protection," he told Belgian media.

"I am prepared to leave for Iran in a second in order to negotiate a humane end to this situation."

However, he could not travel to Iran, he said, without an invitation from the authorities there - "otherwise it would look like a provocation".

Mother 'has no rights'

Mr Michel has already met the girls' mother, Zarah, who lives in the eastern Belgian city of Liege and has legal custody over them.

The minister said the girls had two people constantly looking after them inside the embassy.

Zarah told Belgian media that she had spoke to one of her daughters by telephone and they were both "doing fine".

She said that her divorce had no legal bearing in Iran and "a woman is moreover not allowed to leave the country without permission from her husband".

Mr Michel said he was counting on his good ties with the Iranian foreign minister to obtain permission for the girls' departure and he argued that Belgium was the EU country which had done most to foster good ties with Iran.

Belgium's Le Soir newspaper reports that there are no agreements concerning parental abduction between the two countries and the case of Yasmin and Sara is reportedly the first of its kind between them.

[af_vet_1981]

Belgium will give up the girls for "good relations" with Iran.

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

Cowards, through and through.

[ambrose]

Belgium will give up the girls for "good relations" with Iran.

As Clinton/Reno did with Elian...

[af_vet_1981]

As Clinton/Reno did with Elian...

Exactly !

[sunryse]

You know, as cold as this sounds, I don't understand why these women marry and have kids with these Arabic men???

This happens sooo much. The women have children with (the girls especially) and the men take them to the country where women have NO rights. I just don't get it. If my daughter ever ever wants to marry an Arabic man, I will fight her tooth and nail. I don't know, but I will try. I know someone personally this happened to and she was just stunned that he took her children and she actually had no legal rights to them "in Iran". What made her think that the world would change thier ways for her?

[Arpege92]

"....why aren't the Belgian pedophiles raising their voices in favor of those kids repatriation?"

Because they don't want to insult Iran?

[applemac_g4]

Before we get too far down the "bashing Belgium" road, there are several Americans in this situation (well, they haven't found their way to an embassay to take refuge, but have been taken overseas against their will) and our own State Department hasn't done anything.

[psychoknk]

The Elian case was significantly different than this one. In this case, the mother has legal custody of the children, in which case the Belgian government should fight more for the children. With Elian, the mother died while making the trip. As such, the father is the kid's closest relative. I don't care how much better the U.S. is than Cuba, or how little the father wanted to actually be with the kid - when deciding between grandparents and a father who isn't abusive, the father should clearly win out.

[Reaganwuzthebest]

The women have children with (the girls especially) and the men take them to the country where women have NO rights.

With Muslim immigration exploding in the US this is going to be happening more and more. I've seen tv stories where some women have actually gone into these Middle Eastern countries to steal their kids back. Not an easy thing to do.

[PAR35]

I don't understand why these women marry and have kids with these Arabic men

First, Iranians aren't ethnically Arabs. Second, Zarah sounds more Iranian than French to me.

That being said, German courts have been as biased as any against Americans when children from a mixed marriage are taken there.

[Paleoguy]

Western mothers frequently complain about these situations. Namely, their Muslim husband takes off with the kids to the Middle East and the mothers have no rights in the courts there to get the kids back.

I have two responses to this:

1) If you marry a Muslim from the Middle East, you've got to go in with your eyes open. Everyone knows this kind of thing can happen...so I don't have too much sympathy.

2) These same Western women are perfectly at ease with the American legal system that treats fathers as unfairly as Muslim courts treat mothers. I'd say that your average American man has no more chance of getting custody here than a woman does in Saudi Arabia.

So I tend to write these angry moms off as being a combination of foolish and hypocritical.

Westernthinker.com

[PAR35]

As I noted in my post above, the problem is not limited to the middle east. Germany doesn't care what gender the German parent is, they will always determine that it is in the best interest of the child to be raised as a good little German.

[DonQ]

Let's see. Both girls are Belgian citizens, awarded to their mother in Belgium by order of a Belgian court, and presently they're on Belgian soil because they're inside the Belgian Embassy. Naturally the world's chocolatiers will turn them over to the Irans .... and the next time we hear about them, years from now, they will have been mutilated and married off to Iranians.

[VOA]

If my daughter ever ever wants to marry an Arabic man, I will fight her tooth and nail.
I don't know, but I will try.

Have her watch "Not Without My Daughter" a couple of times.
Then tell her "that's not fiction, that's the way it really is with 'The Religion of Peace'.".

Call me a religious bigot, but I'd be all for committing to an asylum
(for at least one week of observation) any American woman who'd convert to Islam.
And then packing her and an arranged-marriage Muslim hubby onto a
one-way flight to the worst Muslim hell-hole country.

Sure that sounds mean-spirited, but I'd have said the same thing about Communists
if I'd been around in the 1950s. The Islamics are more cunning than the Communists...
they wrap themselves in a "religion" and take advantage of the good nature of America.

[Diva Betsy Ross]

Congratulations on being the first person I have seen make the correlation between the second class rights of men in the US legal system and the second class rights of women in Muslim legal systems. You will undoubtedly be flamed for this - by people with lots of opinions but no data.

You make an excellent point.

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[cherry]

total BS....

if you care to share your govt. issued statistics on child custody then we will listen....otherwise, men have a great chance to get full custody, I know at least two personally...

and to compare anything going on in the USA with what women are put thru in the Middle East is insane......

women beaten, acid thrown in their faces, stoned, pushed off buildings, genital mutilation,.....I could go on.....

[cherry]

you're so right about Germany....

there is a case here locally....I think the mom after going thru all the courts has given up ever seeing her first two sons....

father took off with them to Germany to live and eventually marry his girlfriend....even though mom had custody...

He said that the mother was unfit.....funny thing is,the court said she was totally fit,and she was awared full custody . Apparently, daddy didn't think she was that bad,he left one son with her and took just the two..apparently he didn't like the youngest and left him to be raised by the rotten mom...(imagine splitting up brothers and sisters_).

the Guy actually came back to the US and was picked up and jailed, but they were unable to get him to return the kids, and the Feds released him after some time....Germany was absolutely no help.....

Don't ever depend on our govt. or other govts. to help out....they just will not go to bat for you....and that goes for both moms and dads, because I know its happened to fathers as well when mom takes off to her native land with the kids....