Dozens of Lebanese, including divers, environmentalists and politicians, gathered at the Press Federation in Beirut on Tuesday to show support for Mohammed Sarji, a local environmentalist who has been jailed in the United States since early May, reported the Daily Star.
Sarji, president of the Professional Divers Association and an environmental activist, was arrested in Los Angeles on May 6 and charged with conspiring to kidnap his two nieces.
Tuesday’s gathering was aimed at urging the government to lobby for Sarji’s release, said the paper, adding that he was currently being held in a Mississippi detention center pending his trial.
“We call on the US to retract its decision because this tarnishes its reputation,” said Press Federation president Mohammed Baalbaki.
“A country such as the US, which preaches freedom and respect for human rights, is violating its own motto,” said Sarji’s brother, Mustafa.
The children’s mother, Alice Livingston, had originally filed a lawsuit against her husband for taking the two girls, Megan and Sara, to Beirut in 1993.
However, Mustafa Sarji claimed that the lawsuit was baseless, since a Lebanese Islamic court granted his brother custody of his daughters in 1993, making him their lawful guardian, the paper added.
But Livingston’s suit names several members of the Sarji family, including Mohammed.
The girls, who had lived with their father in Beirut since 1993, were spirited back to their mother last year in a “police operation,” which Mustafa Sarji claimed was initiated by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation – Albawaba.com
