Kuwaiti Nadia Ahmad poses for a picture with her daughter, whom she is fighting for her custody battle. (Credit: Nadia Ahmad's Facebook page)
BEIRUT — "For eight months now, I have been living through suffering that I do not wish for any mother."
Kuwaiti producer and journalist Nadia Ahmad, who lives in Lebanon and is fighting for the custody of her three-year-old daughter, appealed to the Lebanese judiciary in a Facebook post on Friday to bring her back her daughter Roma, who she said was "unlawfully taken away" from her.
Ahmad is married to Lebanese entrepreneur Ali Farhat, who is the girl's father. Speaking to L'Orient-Le Jour, Farhat denied Ahmad's allegations.
In another post on her Instagram page, Ahmad revealed a video, dated April 18, 2023, showing a man carrying a young girl over his shoulders and bolting out of an entertainment center. The video then moves to the street, where the man, carrying the girl, continues running toward a car and jumps into the passenger seat before the car takes off.
The mother, who is a former MBC talk show co-host and the co-founder of the LOYAC Academy of Performing Arts, claimed that the father entered a "game center where my daughter was... and snatched my child from the arms of her visiting grandmother and ran away with her, and I was deprived of her for more than a month."
Screenshot of a video appearing to show a man carrying a young girl over his shoulders out of an entertainment center. (Video credit: Nadia Ahmad)
'Hand over the daughter immediately'
"My child is living through fluctuations, emotional shocks, and intimidation that I do not wish for any child when she is forcibly taken from her safe place to be in the hands and faces she does not know," Ahmad said in her Facebook post on Friday.
Ahmad explained that her daughter was first taken away from her on Dec. 21, for 35 days, after which the girl was returned to her.
The second time, in April, Farhat allegedly took the girl from the game center. "And every time I received my daughter, the neglect of her care seemed clear, and my daughter used to come back to me with a phobia of separation to the extent that she would cling to me and refuse to leave me for a moment until she followed me to the bathroom," Ahmad claimed.
"On July 6, I obtained permanent custody of my daughter by a decision of the Jaafari Sharia Court, and because I had no intention of depriving her father of seeing her, I handed him Roma, with good intentions, on July 10, with the agreement that he would return her after a few hours on the same day," Ahmad said. "But Roma hasn't been returned to me until this moment, despite my legal and civil right to custody."
A court order issued by the Jaafari Court in Baabda, dated July 5 and seen by L'Orient Today, declares that "the mother's right to the custody of her daughter, Roma Ali Farhat... is evident" until the age of seven, while the order "obligates" the father "to hand over" the daughter to the mother "immediately."
Muslim courts, including the Shiite Jaafari courts, are part of the state judiciary. Under Lebanese law they have jurisdiction over marriage, divorce, dowry, alimony, child custody and inheritance for members of Muslim sects. Within the Shiite sect in Lebanon, mothers are typically granted custody of their daughters until age seven, after which custody goes to the father.
Speaking to the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Rai, Ahmad said that she and her Farhat have been separated since November, "and since then he has been refusing to divorce me, only humiliating me."
Ahmad appeals to the Lebanese judiciary
"How can she feel safe after I promised her that she would return in hours, and she has not returned for 11 days now?" Ahmad wrote three days ago on Facebook.
In a separate video the mother posted on social media, which she said was taken at Batroun's police station, Ahmad could be heard speaking to an officer, asking him if she could see her daughter.
"I was able to hear my daughter's voice — I would call her and she would answer back 'mama mama,' but they did not even allow me to see her face," she told Al-Arabiya in an interview about the case. It was not clear when the interview took place.
"I went there thinking that I was going to be able to pick her up," she added.
"I loved Lebanon with all my heart and worked in public affairs for the sake of a country I grew up loving," Ahmad continued in her Facebook post. "How does the Lebanese judiciary accept this transgression from a person who mocked and challenged the judiciary’s ruling, and still how does it accept this terrorism that my daughter and I are exposed to daily?"
"I bear witness to what is happening to me in Lebanon and Kuwait. The embassy has knowledge, and all the judicial agencies and police stations concerned have knowledge of the details of the injustice, violence and extortion that I have been exposed to and am still being exposed to," Ahmad added.
Reacting to his wife's statements, Ali Farhat told L'Orient-Le Jour that she "suffers from an addiction to psychotropic substances, narcotics and alcohol," and has "mental imbalance and behavioral disorders." He criticized her for leaving their daughter Roma "with unreliable people."
"I took her to the appropriate court, but she refused (...). The court therefore took the decision to protect my daughter from her behavior and decided to appoint me Roma's legal guardian and entrust her to my care and protection," he explained. The Jaafarite court's decision, which L'Orient-Le Jour consulted, indicated otherwise.
Farhat said his wife "refused to comply with the decision, abducted the child and evaded justice, which led to a decision to imprison her."
"[Nadia] did not comply with the court order, which forced me to retrieve my daughter without her mother from one of Beirut's children's playgrounds. The video circulating (...) is old. It dates back to April 18, 2023, the period during which my daughter was abducted by her mother and hidden away, depriving me of seeing her for eighty days," he claimed.