Aug 15, 2016
By Jane Brown
A Canadian woman who claims her children were abducted by their father and eventually taken to Iran says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has let her down.
Alison Azer says Trudeau called their safety a high priority, but has failed to secure their return.
It’s been nearly a year since RCMP officers arrived at her door in Courtenay B.C. to say that her children had not boarded their return flight from a vacation with their father, Saran Azer, in Europe.
Earlier this Summer, Azer spoke with Zoomer Radio’s Libby Znaimer about her wrenching family drama.
“The courts granted him permission to travel with four little kids to Europe. He broke court order, he took the children to northern Iraq…into a war zone and I haven’t heard from them in the following eleven months, my four little kids,” lamented Azer.
Last October, she went to Iraq herself for several months, arriving at the village where she thinks her children were staying. Local elders met with her, but only to buy her ex-husband time to flee, she now believes. In February, he took the children to Iran, where he has family.
In June, there seemed to be a breakthrough. Iranian officials, acting on an interpol Red Notice, detained Saran Azer on four charges of child abduction. But Ms. Azer claims that Canadian officials didn’t respond when Iranian law enforcement contacted them about the arrest, and eventually the charges were dropped.
The situation Alison Azer is suffering highlights the human cost of Canada’s severed ties with Tehran, which Prime Minister Trudeau has promised to restore. But Azer says campaign promises ring hollow with her children living thousands of kilometres away in the care of an international fugitive.
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