DUBAI // Briton Steve Grant has told of his ordeal at being stranded in the emirate six weeks after attempting to deliver a video message from his daughter to his kidnapped grandchildren.
The 58-year-old flew to Dubai on April 17 en route to visit Aisha, 10, and her brother Faris, 7, in Oman but was briefly held on arrival after being accused by the children’s Omani grandfather, who lives in Dubai, of harassment. His passport has been confiscated while the claims are investigated and he is staying with a friend who offered him a bed.
“It is just a total nightmare,” Mr Grant said. “It is something you read about that you don’t ever think is actually going to happen. My life is in limbo.”
Aisha and Faris were taken to Oman in 2012 by their father, Usama Al Barwani. The children are in Oman with their paternal grandmother, despite a UK high court order calling for their return.
Mr Grant said his daughter, Lacey Plato, and Mr Al Barwani had been living together in Dubai for years.
But a few years after their second child was born the couple separated.
Mr Al Barwani gave Ms Plato permission to take the children back to the UK, said Mr Grant, who took his daughter and the two children in to his home in Portsmouth, southern England.
“It was amiable, everything was friendly,” said Mr Grant, who added that Mr Al Barwani visited the UK often to see his children.
However, on one weekend visit, Mr Al Barwani never brought the children back to Ms Plato.
Unable to contact him, she later learnt Mr Al Barwani got emergency travel documents and took the children from the UK to his homeland.
It began a legal dispute that has stretched almost three years to try to get the children back on British soil.
“She has now not seen them for more than two years,” said Mr Grant, an engineer.
Ms Plato had been speaking to the children via Skype but this stopped when Mr Al Barwani was arrested at Heathrow airport in London last November, when he flew back in an attempt to win Ms Plato back, said Mr Grant.
Mr Al Barwani was held in the UK for contempt of court after defying the high court order to return the children despite an international arrest warrant being issued against him.
However, the warrant could not be served in Oman because Interpol has no jurisdiction there.
Mr Al Barwani has since been sentenced to four years in jail for abducting the children.
“Now the children are stuck in Oman with no mother or father,” he said, adding that the extended family in Oman has now stopped all forms of communication. “Nobody is winning.
“Lacey wanted to deliver a message to say she loved them and she was still thinking of them and she wants them back in the UK with her. The normal things a mother would say.”
On his arrest, Dubai Police told Mr Grant that he is alleged to have threatened the elder Mr Al Barwani.
“I was told I had a case on me,” he said. “I immediately I knew it must be something to do with the father.”
Mr Grant has been given no time-scale as to when his ordeal might be over, despite already racking up about Dh34,000 in legal fees, and said his daughter was frantic for news.
“As well as the children, now I am stuck here,” he said, adding that false claims that his daughter was an adulterer meant she was also fearful of flying to Oman in case she was arrested.
Ms Plato, speaking to local media in the UK, said she was in “complete shock” over her father’s arrest.
“He was only going there to see the children, to see that they are all right,” she said. “I am so worried about them.
“All I get from Usama’s sister in Oman is that God is on their side and that the children know what’s true.
“I rang their school there but was told that the children had been taken out of the school because I was dead.
“I just want them back and I want my dad back. It’s so hard – he can’t do anything and we can’t do anything for him.”
jbell@thenational.ae
