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The journey would take more than a month and would involve what Moore called being “politely kidnapped” by the smugglers and “protective custody” by an al-Qaida affiliate. It ended with her sons being returned to their father in Lebanon.

Bimbachi and Moore had travelled from their homes in Chatham, Ont., to Lebanon in November to pursue a legal effort to gain custody of Bimbachi’s sons, Omar, nine, and seven-year-old Abdel-Ghaniy. She says her estranged husband took the boys on a vacation to visit family in Lebanon in 2015 and never returned.

“I came to Lebanon to see my babies. I have been a victim of parental kidnapping,” she told Abdul Kareem.

She said it became apparent the Lebanese courts “favour men over women,” so she and Moore — a friend who does humanitarian work — hatched their plan to take the boys out through Syria.

Photo by Handout

I came to Lebanon to see my babies. I have been a victim of parental kidnapping

“We decided to come into Syria, and hopefully from Syria we’ll cross over to Turkey, and then in Turkey we’ll go to the Canadian embassy and the Canadian embassy will help us,” she said.

Moore said he did not realize it at the time, but by the second day inside Syria they were prisoners. “We were welcomed. We were fed. We didn’t know that we had actually been taken, but again as I now understood it we were kidnapped — just politely kidnapped,” Moore said.

The al-Qaida-linked Hay’at Tahrir al Sham (HTS) — Arabic for Levant Liberation Committee — later took over their custody, but the Canadians had only good things to say about the group.