MOTHER MISSING!

TORONTO — A Canadian woman and her family are missing after
she went to retrieve her two daughters in Lebanon where her
husband had taken them.
In a child disappearance case spanning three continents and
six months, Melissa Hawach and her father, Jim Engdahl, have
not been heard from since Dec. 21, when she grabbed her
daughters, Hannah, 5 and Cedar, 3, from a hotel near Beirut.
Lebanese security officials said Sunday that the whereabouts
of Melissa Hawach and her two daughters are still unknown.
Also, it was not known whether the woman and her daughters
had left Lebanon via an illegal land crossing at the border
with Syria, the officials said, speaking on condition of
anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to
the media.
Hawach's estranged husband, Joseph Hawach, had taken
the girls to Lebanon — from where his family originally
hails — without her permission, said Rhonda Morgan,
executive director of the Missing Children Society of Canada.
Morgan said Sunday she was waiting to hear from
Melissa Hawach adding that she wanted her daughters
back in Canada by Christmas. "That was the goal," she said.
Catherine Gagnaire, a spokeswoman for Canada's
Foreign Affairs Department in Ottawa, said it had been
providing assistance to Melissa Hawach since July but
did not know whether they still had contact or whether
they were returning to Canada.
Joseph Hawach had secured his estranged wife's approval
to take the children to visit his family in Australia in July
and was to return the girls to Melissa , who has custody, in
August.
Near the end of the vacation, her husband stopped
answering her calls. She called her in-laws and was told
by them that he had left the country and would not be
returning with the girls, Morgan told The Associated Press.
"That started a huge search. At first we didn't know where
they were. Then there were rumors that Joe and the girls
and his mother had gone to Lebanon at the height of the
Lebanon-Israeli war in the summer," Morgan told the AP
on Saturday. "We couldn't confirm that, but eventually
there was an address location confirmed for Joe and
the girls just north of Beirut."
Australian court records show that during a Nov. 29
preliminary hearing in a legal action Melissa Hawach filed
against her husband's family in New South Wales state
Supreme Court, Joseph Hawach's brother, father and
uncle told the court that the children had been taken
to Lebanon.
"He's expressed an intention to stay," court records
quoted Hawach's brother, Pierre Hawach as saying
while recalling a phone conversation he had with his
brother. "He said, 'I'm not coming back'."
Hawach's family in Australia could not be reached
Sunday for comment.
Melissa Hawach had retained lawyers in Lebanon,
Canada and Australia, and had been told that similar
cases in the country had favored the wronged spouse,
despite the fact that Lebanon was not a party to an
international treaty on the return of abducted children.
However, she later learned that the process could drag
on for as long as two years in Lebanese court, said Morgan.
"Melissa didn't go over there with the intention of the
re-abduction of the kids. She went over there to go
through the courts," said Morgan. "She did everything in
her power to do the right thing and was basically left with
no other alternative."
With the hope of speeding along the process,
Melissa Hawach, who had traveled to Australia twice
since the girls disappeared, left for Lebanon in the middle
of December and checked into the same hotel.
She spent several days watching the girls from a distance
as they played with other children in the compound and,
upon learning that the surveillance team she hired was
returning home for the Christmas holiday, decided she
could not leave without the girls, according to Morgan.
Morgan added that Melissa Hawach decided she would
approach the girls and, if they wanted to come with her,
would take them to the Canadian embassy in Lebanon.
"She went to the hotel and, when the girls came down,
she called out to them and they apparently ran to her,"
said Morgan, citing testimony from unidentified witnesses
at the hotel. She then took them away in a waiting vehicle,
said Morgan.
The officials said the New Zealander and Australian who
helped Melissa Hawach recover her daughters are still in
Lebanese police custody for their alleged role in the
kidnapping of the two children without their father's
knowledge and attempting to leave Lebanon after
finishing their job.
Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
said that a 38-year-old man was detained in Beirut on
Dec. 21 and is being provided with consular assistance