Through the cooperation of several international government and law enforcement agencies, including the authorities in Croatia, three children that were kidnapped by their father earlier this year have been recovered overseas and returned to their mother in the United States, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said on Friday.
The three children have been reunited with their mother, while their father has been charged with international parental kidnapping before a district court in Santa Ana, California.
The father of the victims, Michael Mobin Meskal, a 45-year-old Syrian citizen, is suspected of taking the children out of the United States in violation of the parental rights of the victims' mother.
The victims' mother, Natasha Meskal, discovered that her husband and children were missing upon her return from business travel in August 2010. Natasha Meskal later learned that her husband had taken her children to Syria without her permission. She then travelled to Syria, where her children had been enrolled in school and was told that the children's father refused to return them to the United States.
On November 29, 2010, Natasha Meskal contacted the police to report that her husband had abducted her three children, after which an investigation was initiated. When it had been determined that the children were taken overseas without the mother's consent, the FBI joined the investigation.
On December 9, 2010, Michael Meskal agreed to travel with his children to Croatia to meet with their mother. Natasha Meskal purchased plane tickets for her husband and three children to Zagreb and travelled there to meet them. The federal criminal complaint was filed and a federal arrest warrant issued on December 10, 2010.
The FBI did not say whether Natasha Meskal has Croatian citizenship or Croatian origins, nor did it explain how it came that the couple arranged to meet in Zagreb.
Agents with the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office collaborated with FBI legal attaché offices, the State Department, and Interpol officials overseas in order to enlist the assistance of law enforcement authorities in Croatia in recovering the victim children and to arrest the defendant.
When the defendant travelled with the children to Croatia on December 15, police officials in Croatia, based upon the Interpol diffusions, arrested the defendant and reunited the children with their mother.
After being successfully reunited with her children in Croatia, Natasha Meskal and her children returned to the United States late Wednesday afternoon.
Michael Meskal and Natasha Meskal are legally married and at the time of the abduction, there was no formal custody agreement between them. Natasha Meskal has since filed for divorce and an emergency order in California seeking full custody of her children.
Michael Meskal is currently being held by law enforcement authorities in Croatia, and the US government will seek his extradition based on the pending federal charges.
The FBI said that the successful arrest of the children's father and recovery of the children would not have been possible without international cooperation, listing the law enforcement agencies that were instrumental in the case, including the Croatian police, the Croatian Ministry of the Interior, Interpol's Zagreb Office and the US Embassy in Zagreb.
