Mom of kidnapped girls continues crusade

By Jon Dougherty

A mother whose Saudi Arabian ex-husband kidnapped her two daughters and took them back to his native land in the 1980s has voiced support for a California measure designed to help prevent international child abductions.

Pat Roush, whose case has been instrumental in convincing Congress to hold hearings into such abductions this month, told WorldNetDaily that she supports A.B. 2441, introduced in the California Assembly in February, which seeks to strengthen current laws prohibiting international child abduction.

“This bill would require, in any proceeding to determine child custody or visitation with a child, a custody order to contain, among other things, a clear description of the custody and visitation rights of each party and a provision stating that a violation of the order may subject the party who violates the order to civil or criminal penalties,” says a summary of the bill.

The measure would also require courts “to consider specified factors in determining the risk of abduction of the child, including whether the party is a citizen of another country, has strong emotional or cultural ties to another country, or has indicated that he or she may attempt to, or has threatened to, take the child to another country,” the bill states.

“The bill would also require the court to consider taking specified measures to prevent the abduction of the child,” the summary continued. “International abductions of children are on the rise, and only a mutually established and agreed upon plan between American and foreign courts can reduce or eradicate this problem.”

The measure cites provisions of the 1980 “Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction,” which was signed by the U.S. and various nations at The Hague, Netherlands. That document opposes “abduction as a course of putting an end to a custody matter, by calling for the abducted child to be returned to the country where he or she lived prior to the abduction.”

Saudi Arabia is not a signatory to the convention.

Roush said she is scheduled to speak at a news conference at the state Capitol building in Sacramento on Monday in support of the measure. On Tuesday, she is scheduled to appear before the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee, which is considering the measure.

Congress has passed laws giving parents of internationally abducted children recourse in the courts, but when international politics is also a factor, most times such laws are of little practical benefit.

Roush knows that firsthand. She has tried unsuccessfully for 16 years to force the U.S. government to help her recover her daughters from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to no avail.

Roush’s ex-husband and the father of their children – Khalid al-Gheshayan – defied a court order and abducted Alia and Aisha al-Gheshayan, then 7 and 3 respectively, from Roush’s suburban Chicago home.

Al-Gheshayan took the girls back to Saudi Arabia, where women have substantially fewer rights, and has prevented them from leaving. Now adults, Alia, 23, has been married off to a cousin of her father. Plans are in place to marry off Aisha, 19.

Roush, who has been working tirelessly for years to bring her daughters home, has only seen them once – in 1995 – since they were abducted, but that visit lasted only minutes and was strictly supervised.

Both girls have expressed a desire to return to the U.S., Roush said, but repeatedly have been denied visas and passports by the Saudi government, even though they are considered American citizens allegedly being held against their will.

The congressional hearings this month, to be conducted by the House Government Reform Committee, will bring light to the issue of international abductions and specifically, Roush hopes, to her case and the U.S. government’s historic deference to Saudi Arabia.

“The State Department will be asked to account for what they have done not only in my case, but in several other most egregious cases of Americans in jeopardy in Saudi Arabia,” Roush said. “I am hopeful that the truth will be revealed about how the U.S. State Department has sacrificed the lives of my daughters for the sake of this ‘special relationship’ with the Saudi princes – for economic, military and political gain.”

Some analysts say the U.S. should simply cut its ties to Saudi Arabia.

“Although the House of Saud, Saudi Arabia’s royal family, has long leaned toward the West, it is a corrupt totalitarian regime at sharp variance with America’s most cherished values,” writes Doug Bandow, a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and a senior fellow at the CATO Institute. “Despite the well-publicized ties between the two governments, Saudi Arabia has seldom aided, and often hamstrung, U.S. attempts to combat terrorism.”

“The United States does not need to be deferential because of the oil issue,” he continued in his March 20 analysis. “Although Riyadh possesses the globe’s most abundant reserves, it currently provides only about 10 percent of production. In the short term, any supply disruption would cause fairly significant harm; the impact would be ameliorated in the long term, however, as new sources were found and the U.S. economy adapted.”

There is also growing concern about increased anti-Western bias in Saudi Arabia. Those concerns were punctuated by the Sept. 11 attacks; 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, home to al-Qaida founder and the planner of those attacks, Osama bin Laden.

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Jon Dougherty

Jon E. Dougherty is a Missouri-based political science major, author, writer and columnist. Follow him on Twitter. Read more of Jon Dougherty's articles here.