THE fate of an Australian mother and a TV crew embroiled in a botched child recovery mission in Lebanon will be decided today with the start of a hearing for 10 people facing charges of kidnapping, harm and disrespect for authorities.

Brisbane mother Sally Faulkner will front Baabda Palace of Justice in Mt Lebanon in Beirut alongside high-profile news reporter Tara Brown and her Channel 9 film crew, three local men and two Britons.

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It is expected to be the first full day hearing after the judge yesterday read lengthy testimony provided from the prosecutor including formally filed motions of charges, which can carry anything from three years to life in jail.

60 Minutes crew in Lebanon formally charged with the following pic.twitter.com/3oed5vdRoX — Tom Steinfort (@tomsteinfort) April 12, 2016

He late yesterday completed interviewing each of the accused individually in his chambers and today, with their lawyers by their side, will decide whether he will uphold or dismiss their charges and or grant bail pending further inquiries.

If he rules the latter the group may all have to remain in Lebanon pending a trial or further investigation.

Lebanese news service the Daily Star reports the charges could lead to 20 years’ jail time. Alternatively, the judge could downgrade the charges following the interviews.

According to the ABC, child abduction charges against Ms Faulkner and the 60 Minutes crew could be downgraded from the more serious “deprivation of liberty” to a misdemeanour because it was not a case of kidnapping for ransom but instead about reuniting the children with their mother.

Yesterday, Ms Faulkner broke down in tears as she waited in the corridor to speak with the judge and make a personal plea for clemency.

Ms Faulkner and the nine others including the Channel 9 crew were charged over the failed attempt to snatch her kids, three-and-a-half-year-old Noah and five-and-a-half-year-old Lahela off a main street in Beirut as they waited for their school bus with a nanny and grandmother who was pushed to the ground and hit on the head during the scuffle.

The raid was carried out by an international child custody rescue specialist outfit wearing balaclavas, the scene captured by street CCTV cameras and the Channel 9 crew filming nearby.

Legal sources said yesterday at the heart of the case was custody of the children which was granted to the mother in Australia but also the American-Lebanese dual national father Ali Elamine in Lebanon.

The father has the backing of the powerful religious court that granted him custody; apparently working against the mother’s case was that she had started a new relationship since theirs broke down two years ago and had another baby.

Legal sources within the palace also point out Mr Elamine’s mother is Ibtissam Berri, a powerful surname in Beirut with the family linked to Parliament Speaker and head of the Amal Movement Shia Party Nabih Berri.

Ms Faulkner reportedly arrived in Beirut by boat and was planning to leave on a yacht skippered by a British sailor and former Australian soldier Adam Whittington via Cyprus.

Speaking outside of the court, Mr Elamine yesterday expressed his dismay at the situation.

“It is a big mess, a really big mess, 100 per cent,” he told News Corp Australia.

“The children are good, they are in good health and that is all that matters not the media not what happened, but it (CCTV of the botched operation) is for everyone to view.

“But the children, I’ve calmed them down as much as I can. It was a bit rough and tough. The manpower ... it went wrong in places.

“It is a mess, all of it. She (the children’s mother Sally Faulkner) could have gone about it in a different way, not like this.

“What happened shouldn’t have happened and the kids should not have been put in a situation where someone could have been harmed; the kids should not have been dragged into this.”

On his 69-year-old mother Ibtissam Berri, who was slightly injured in the botched snatch, he said: “She is coping, but it wasn’t great for her.”

Ms Berri previously described the operation as violent.

“I was holding Noah’s hand, while my maid was with his sister Lahela waiting for the school bus,” she told local Lebanese television.

“Assailants then attacked us and snatched the children.”

It is understood the father, who works as a water sports instructor in Beirut, had always taken the children to school, but last Wednesday he had a booking for four people wanting windsurfing lessons. Those people never turned up and the booking may have been fake.

“It may not have happened if I was there,” he said.

Earlier the court heard one of three Lebanese men charged in relation to the case is local taxi driver Hamza Mohamad, who allegedly allowed his home to be the safe house sanctuary for Ms Faulkner and her two children.

He has told Judge Abdullah that he was contacted by his brother in Sweden and simply told to collect a Western woman and take her back to his house.

“She said I don’t have anyone here, I don’t know anybody. I am just from Australia and I have come to get my kids,” he said.

His lawyer has told the court he was not aware of any custody dispute or prior incident of the capture of the children.

But it was from his house that internal security forces recaptured the children after Mr Elamine established mobile telephone contact with his estranged wife, allowing internal security officers to trace the call and mount a raid.

The Nine Network last night played down reports that it had launched an internal investigation into the involvement of its flagship current affairs program 60 Minutes in the recovery operation, amid unconfirmed local reports the network paid a six figure sum toward the controversial child recovery plot.

“We are co-operating fully with the Lebanese authorities and it is important to stress that we respect the laws of Lebanon and its judiciary,” a spokesperson said.

A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson yesterday said the 60 Minutes crew and Ms Faulkner will likely be able to apply for bail at an early stage of the process.

“The 60 Minutes crew and Ms Faulkner are being held as part of an ongoing investigation,” the DFAT spokesperson said.

“The Australian Government is providing all appropriate consular assistance.”

Col Chapman, a rival child recovery agent who runs a business on the Sunshine Coast, yesterday criticised the work of Child Abduction Recovery International, which is run by former Australian soldier Adam Whittington, describing them as “cowboys”.

Grainy CCTV footage of the botched retrieval shows two agents getting out of a car and snatching the children from two women in a busy street.

The footage appears at odds with Mr Whittington’s descriptions of his organisation’s methods during an interview on Australian radio last year.

“We always get co-operation when we are on the ground with authorities, whether it is police or immigration,” he told Triple M radio in 2015.

“Our number one propriety is the child’s safety — if we do our planning and everything, and we are ready to go and there is for whatever, a technicality or a safety issue, we would not do the recovery we will pull back,” he said.

But Mr Whittington admitted in that same interview that he had previously been jailed in Singapore for his involvement in another child recovery.

- with Staff Writers