Kids held captive in Saudi Arabia: mothers plead for help from the U.S. State Department, which handles Saudi Arabia with kid gloves instead of securing the release of almost 100 kidnapped children

0 Comments | Insight on the News, July 15, 2002 | by Timothy W. Maier

After a recent emotionally charged congressional hearing Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, vowed to persuade President George W. Bush to take action against Saudi Arabian kidnappers who have held U.S. children captive in some cases as long as 16 years.

Burton's pledge came after gut-wrenching testimony from three American mothers who painfully described how their children became victims of international parental kidnapping in Saudi Arabia. The stories of Pat Roush, Monica Stowers and Miriam Hernandez-Davis have been detailed in INSIGHT since this magazine began reporting on the issue in 1999 [see "Stolen Kids Become Pawns in Terror War," Dec. 17, 2001; "All Talk, No Action on Stolen Children," June 18, 2001; "Double Standard for American Children," March 6, 2000; and "Kids Held Hostage," March 8, 1999]. But they are not alone. The State Department has revealed that there are 46 known cases concerning 92 children being held captive in Saudi Arabia.

After the June 12 hearing, Burton fired off two strongly worded letters to Bush, since obtained by INSIGHT. Burton urged the president to instruct the State Department to withhold the visas of the kidnappers and their extended family members who are holding U.S. citizens against their will. The policy had been in place briefly in 1996, after a deal apparently was struck to free Roush's daughters in exchange for allowing one of her ex-husband's relatives to receive cancer treatment in the United States. That deal ended when Ray Mabus, U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, resigned and was replaced by former senator Wyche Fowler (D-Ga.), who lifted the ban on the relative.

"If Saudi Arabia is not willing to recognize the importance of American law and the rights of American citizens, it is difficult to see how Saudi Arabia will fully cooperate with the U.S. in the war on terror," Burton charged in one of his letters to Bush. In addition, Burton asked the president personally to intervene in the Roush and Stowers cases. (Hernandez-Davis' daughter, Dria, escaped Saudi Arabia in a dramatic incident reported by INSIGHT [see "A Great Escape," Feb. 14, 2000] and now lives in Miami.) Burton also has requested a meeting with Saudi Arabia's minister of foreign affairs. At press time the chairman had not received a response from either the White House or the Saudis.

Before the hearing, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Bill Burns raised the matter with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. But after the hearing Bush missed a golden opportunity to pursue the issue with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer tried to provide an excuse for Bush when pressed about the issue. "It's a heartbreaking, difficult issue that the State Department works very hard on in a very individual way to do what's best for the interests of the child," Fleischer stated. "It's just as complicated and just as sad as any domestic case here where you have parents who are fighting for the custody of a child, and it's compounded and made more difficult by the fact that it involves laws of a sovereign nation that the United States cannot control, whether it's Saudi Arabia or any other nation."

But as the Wall Street Journal recently pointed out, it's quite the contrary when the shoe is on the other foot. Last January, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayif told the Arab News that the United States should send back the captured Saudi nationals being held in Guantanamo, Cuba. "We'll demand that the Saudi detainees be handed over, because they are subject to the kingdom's rules," Prince Nayif stated.

Upon learning of Fleischer's response to the Burton hearings, a frustrated Roush called it a "Bush kiss-off," considering that in her case an international-fugitive arrest warrant has been issued for her ex-husband. "How can they continue to refer to this criminal destruction of my daughters' lives as a child-custody issue--a private-citizen matter?" Roush asks INSIGHT. "They are grown women who have been stripped of all their rights as human beings for 16 years and now have been sold into arranged marriages and impregnated by Saudi men. It amazes me to see the lengths to which Washington will go to protect the Saudis and disavow my American daughters."

Roush told the committee, "If members of Congress are so concerned about human rights and fair treatment of Saudi al-Qaeda prisoners held in Cuba, and even make special trips to inspect that facility at Guantanamo, why aren't they outraged about what has happened to my daughters? Why don't they make an exchange--innocent daughters for the Saudi al-Qaeda killers?"

Roush, trained as a nurse, has fought for 16 years to bring home her daughters, Alia and Aisha, who were taken from her when they were ages 7 and 3, respectively. Her husband, Khalid al-Gheshayan, has been arrested repeatedly and was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic while in the United States. The daughters are forbidden to leave Saudi Arabia because, under Saudi law, female "citizens" cannot leave the country without written permission of a father or husband. Roush was allowed to see her daughters once for two hours in 1995. At that time Alia begged her not to leave and to take her and her sister home to America.