The wife of an Australian citizen facing jail in Lebanon for his part in snatching two children on a Beirut street has warned TV network Channel Nine that her husband will reveal details of the media company’s complicity in the plot.



Karin Whittington, the Swedish wife of Adam Whittington, a former Australian soldier turned “child recovery specialist”, said she was “disgusted” by a deal struck by the Australian TV channel that allowed four of its journalists to be released on bail, leaving her husband and associates in jail.



“The truth will come out – Adam knows the bosses at Channel Nine he was talking to when they planned the operation, but he is keeping quiet,” Karin Whittington told the Guardian.



“The deal they made was disgusting – they got everyone out and left Adam behind. They paid for him to be there; they were part of his operation. It’s easy to buy a story and then buy yourself out when there is trouble.”



Whittington, a joint UK-Australian national, was one of 11 people detained in April after Lebanese police foiled an operation to reunite Australian mother Sally Faulkner with the two children that her ex-husband had taken to Lebanon.

Adam Whittington is a joint UK-Australia national and entered Lebanon on a British passport. Photograph: Youtube

The children’s father, Ali al-Amin, took five-year-old old Lahela and Noah, three, to Beirut under the guise of a three-week holiday. They were never returned, sparking a media campaign by Faulkner that culminated in the children being taken from a south Beirut street on 7 April in part of a story for Nine’s 60 Minutes program.



Faulkner and the television crew were charged with kidnapping offences but released last week in a deal with al-Amin that excluded Whittington, his colleague Craig Michaels, and two local fixers.

Channel Nine has distanced itself from the deal to hire Whittington but declined to comment on a document obtained by Australian media which showed it paid him A$69,000 (£36,000) for an “investigation” into missing children. A source connected to the case told Fairfax Media last week the payment had been made in error and was intended for the children’s mother, Sally Faulkner.

Nine has also denied paying a substantial sum to the children’s Lebanese father in return for dismissing the kidnapping charges.

“The payment to my husband was not a mistake – a big TV company doesn’t make a mistake like that,” Karin Whittington said. “And clearly they made a deal behind Adam’s back to pay the father to drop the private charges against the TV crew and Sally.”



The TV journalists did not discuss the deal with her husband, because they didn’t know exactly what was going on, she said.

“We have to respect the Lebanese system, and of course if they have broken Lebanese laws they should expect punishment. But why release only some of them? Obviously it’s money; that’s the only explanation,” Whittington said.

She added that Channel Nine had the power to include in the deal all those arrested after the bungled attempt to snatch Sally Faulkner’s children, but “they took the quick and easy way out” by freeing only their own staff.



“I am angry with Channel Nine, I have every right to feel that way. To save their reputation just a little bit, now would be a good time to reach out a hand to Adam, to admit they made a mistake and to correct that mistake.”

She said no one from Channel Nine had contacted her, including the three journalists who shared a cell with her husband, or Tara Brown, the reporter for 60 Minutes, who was also arrested.

“I get angry when I see them cuddling with their families, and not a word abut the one they left behind. How can they say they are not responsible for anything? It’s not like they jumped the gun and said: ‘Let’s go to Lebanon tomorrow, there’s a good story’. Everyone knows they were planning the operation, and that they paid for it.”



Whittington was also angry that Nine had agreed with Ali al-Amin not to show footage from their trip to Lebanon, which would reveal the children were delighted to be reunited with their mother and to be going home to Australia, she said. She feared the deal might also include a requirement to delete all of the text messages and emails contained on her husband’s phone and laptop, which had been seized.

“That’s what I am scared of. What if the investigators are sitting on all the evidence and can decide whether to release it or not?” she said. “It is more comfortable for Channel Nine if Adam stays where he is?”

Adam Whittington was not a “mercenary for hire”, his wife insisted. Most of the work of his company, Child Abduction Recovery International, involved establishing the whereabouts of kidnapped children, and he only intervened if a parent had legal proof of custody.

Sally Faulkner was granted sole custody of the children by the Family Court in Australia in December.

Her husband did not talk to her about the details of his work with CARI, Mrs Whittington said, which he had set up three or four years ago

Unable to continue her job as an estate agent because she felt unable to face clients, she said she feared having to sell their home to cope with mounting legal fees and other costs. The boat hired by her husband to take the children out of Lebanon to Cyprus would now cost far more than the initial $28,000, she said, and it was racking up a further$2,200 a week in docking fees in Beirut.



The Australian embassy in Beirut has declined to help her or her husband, because Mr Whittington entered Lebanon on a British passport. Adam Whittington has dual British-Australian citizenship, although he grew up in Australia and served five years in the army. He is in jail with Briton, Craig Michael, and two Lebanese fixers who carried out the operation to seize the children.

The British embassy was in regular contact with her, Mrs Whittington said. In 2014 the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office invited CARI to meet and discuss “what the FCO can and cannot do when a child is abducted overseas by a parent”, expressing pleasure at CARI’s role in two abduction cases. However, the letter expressed concern at the methods used.

Mrs Whittington has yet to tell her two sons, aged five and 10, what has happened to their father, but she said she would have to do so soon.

“The children’s father has the children and a large sum of of money – it is win-win for him. I hope the judge will see the truth in all of this, how the others just paid out and abandoned Adam. That’s my only hope. “

“The children’s father might think that Adam is a powerful man sitting on a lot of money, but he is himself a father trying to help other parents, and the money he makes is minimal. Adam is not a threat to him, so there is no point to keep him there in Beirut.”

Channel Nine declined to comment on whether Whittington had been in contact with senior Nine staff while planning the operation but said his company had a contract with Faulkner alone.

“Nine was involved as journalists filming a story with Sally for which we had a contract with her, and as such had no contract with CARI independent of Sally,” a spokeswoman said.

“So we don’t have a comment and we don’t have a relationship with Adam, he has his own legal advice locally in Lebanon [and] support from the British Embassy as he travelled into Lebanon on a British passport.

“Adam has already made many accusations about Nine and we will not be commenting on the matters,” she said.