Those four have been charged with kidnapping and being members of a criminal gang after a botched attempt to recover the two young children of Australian woman Sally Faulkner in Beirut last week. Ray Martin has revealed he was involved in filming a child recovery operation in Spain in 1980. Credit:Angela Wylie One major difference between the two cases, Martin said, was that he and his crew were not caught by Spanish authorities, although they certainly knew they were breaking the law in that country. But ethically and morally they believed it was the "decent thing to do", as the boy's father had originally broken Australian law by taking the child from the boy's mother, who was extremely distressed at the prospect of never seeing her son again. "In recovering that child [in Spain], the national laws were such that, had we been caught at the time, we would have broken a national law, so I'm very conscious of what's happening in Lebanon," Martin told ABC 612 in Brisbane.

"As journalists, we do stories that we think are right and are ethical. Tara Brown. Credit:Channel Nine "The question is about ethics and about the morality and the right and wrong. I think in this case, as I understand it, I think the 60 Minutes crew have been ethical and I think they have done the right thing." The child recovery operation Martin and his crew filmed centred around Launceston woman Kayleen Thorne and her son, Gaudi Rubio-Thorne. Martin said Ms Thorne had been granted custody of her son in Australia, but the boy's father had illegally taken him overseas to Spain, where the father was recognised as having custody of the child.

Martin said the woman had sought the help of an Australian private detective, who was involved in about a dozen similar child recovery cases involving Australian children who had been taken overseas illegally in the 1980s. Martin and his 60 Minutes crew travelled to Spain to film the operation, in which the mother grabbed her child in a Barcelona cafe while the father went to the bathroom. He said his crew did not pay any money but simply filmed the recovery operation. "Ethically as a journalist, I thought we were doing the right thing because ... the father had broken the Australian laws and taken the children away. It was a very common thing," Martin told the ABC. He said he "drove the car from Barcelona in Spain" once the child had been taken.

Martin said he believed it was a valid story because the father had broken the law in Australia. He believed the 60 Minutes crew now imprisoned in Beirut would have been driven by similar motives. "I know Tara and I know Stephen Rice, the producer, and I know the crew, who are highly professional and highly ethical, and I can't believe they did something that was unethical. "Illegal perhaps there, we will wait and see, but hopefully not, and I'm concerned about their welfare."