Nine people, including a former UK-based detective turned “child recovery specialist”, an Australian TV network crew and an Australian woman accused of an attempted kidnapping of her two children, have been charged in Lebanon with crimes that carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison and hard labour.

A Lebanese judicial source told the Guardian that the suspects had been charged with “armed abduction, purveying threats and physical harm,” accusations that carry sentences of between seven and 20 years.

Investigative judge Rami Abdullah referred the case to the prosecutor general after he and Lebanese police questioned the suspects. The case will now be examined by the prosecutor general, who is likely to issue indictments in preparation for a trial.

Adam Whittington, described by a UK court as a “former mercenary”, is accused of leading the operation that allegedly saw the children snatched from a street in Beirut last week and briefly reunited with their mother, Sally Faulkner.

Faulkner says the children’s Lebanese father, Ali al-Amin, took them for a holiday to the country last May and never returned – a claim that al-Amin disputes.

An Australian army veteran, Whittington now works as a child recovery agent, using tactics described on his website and in tabloid newspapers to find children caught in custody battles, and spirit them over borders or onto boats. His website boasts of an elite team of associates with experience in the military and special police forces.

Whittington, Faulkner and seven others, including four journalists from the Australian current affairs programme 60 Minutes, were arrested by Lebanese authorities after the alleged abduction. The children were later returned to their father.



Adam Whittington speaking in a video on the Child Abduction Recovery International website. Photograph: CARI

The 60 Minutes team, led by the Nine Network reporter Tara Brown, were in Lebanon to document the recovery of the children but have not confirmed allegations that they covered Whittington’s AU$115,000 (£62,000) fee.

Statement from Channel Nine regarding charges being filed against 60 Minutes crew in Lebanon pic.twitter.com/4OPAIoiYBw — Tom Steinfort (@tomsteinfort) April 12, 2016

Friends of Faulkner, who has another three-month-old child in Australia, told the Guardian on Tuesday of her anguish at losing Lahala, six, and Noah, four.



Whittington, who appears to have dual Australian and British nationality, was imprisoned in Singapore in 2014 after attempting to snatch a two-year-old boy caught in a custody dispute. He also claims on his LinkedIn profile to have been the lead investigator hired by a family to investigate the disappearance of the murdered British woman Lucie Blackman in Japan in 2000.

His professional Child Abduction Recovery International website says his operation has been “operating privately ‘under the radar’ (out of the media eye) for over 15 years, until now. All our operatives have served operational world wide with elite military special forces and served in specialised police units around the world”.

“We think like the abductors and operate accordingly,” the website says. It does not specify how much child recovery costs a parent, saying each case is costed individually, but a now defunct fundraising page by one parent in Brisbane, Australia, cites the need to raise almost £7,000 to acquire Cari’s services.



In a video posted in August last year, Whittington said he had originally begun the service with 10 associates, but due to high demand recruited two more, who had experience in the US Navy Seals and the CIA. The organisation, he said, had returned 130 children from 40 countries, including Libya, Syria, Iran and Russia.

Despite the dramatic descriptions of the operations, Whittington said in the video his team were “not the Rambo type … we don’t go in with grenades, camouflage faces, we’re much more professional than that.”

Whittington’s services have featured in the media, including the Daily Mail, Daily Mirror and magazine features.

In 2014, the Mirror reported that Cari’s team had driven a blacked-out jeep into the jungle in Laos to find Briton Gordon Carr’s four-year-old son Moregan, who had been taken by his mother back to her home country. Describing the operation as being “like a James Bond movie”, Carr said the team had then swapped vehicles and taken a boat to the Thai border.



Another testimonial, recounted to the Mirror, describes members of the Cari team pepper-spraying a grandfather as they snatched a four-year-old girl taken to Poland by her mother.



Whittington has previously criticised rival Colin Chapman for using the media in child retrieval operations.

In a post on his blog in December, which was later deleted but has been recovered by the Guardian, he wrote of Chapman’s scheme to recover the son of an Australian actress from Malaysia: “This is a nothing but a media circus.”

“Not once in Cari’s 16 years of doing this job have we known any parent who has been in the media immediately after they abduct their child(ren).”



At the time, Whittington claims he was advising the other parent involved in the dispute.



Chapman, a Brisbane-based private detective, was reportedly the underbidder for last week’s Beirut plot, and has since been quoted in the media criticising Whittington and 60 Minutes.

Nine, which screens 60 Minutes, warned on Tuesday of “inaccurate or unreliable” media reporting around the case.

“Regrettably, a number of inaccurate media reports are exacerbating the concern and confusion of the families of those being detained,” a Nine spokeswoman said.

“Media reports, including those based on inaccurate or unreliable sources, could be used in evidence and coverage of information that could not be made public if these proceedings were in front of an Australian court, [which] could be highly prejudicial to the proceedings in Lebanon.



“We urge all media to take extreme care in reporting on matters that could impact on the welfare of our crew or Sally Faulkner, especially given the issues and sensitivities involved in cases involving disputed custody. “



The Nine news director, Darren Wick, flew to Beirut over the weekend to work with a Lebanese legal team and has reported that the crew are in good health and being looked after.



But contact with the crew, who are manacled while in custody, is severely limited, meaning information is scarce.



Nine said the 60 Minutes crew were in Beirut to film and interview Faulkner after she was reunited with her children and declined to confirm or deny that they paid for the child recovery process.



“We want to see our crew and Ms Faulkner return home safely as soon as possible and we are working with a respected Lebanese legal team in Beirut to secure this outcome,” the spokeswoman said.



Nine said the employees were receiving “tremendous support” from Australian diplomatic representatives in Lebanon and foreign affairs officials in Canberra.

