Sydney // An Australian television crew accused of aiding a mother in the botched kidnapping of her two children in Lebanon arrived in Sydney on Thursday amid reports of a multimillion-dollar deal struck with the father to drop abduction charges.
Brisbane mother Sally Faulkner and the Channel Nine team were arrested and charged last week after Ms Faulkner’s son and daughter were snatched in broad daylight on a Beirut street.
But they were released on bail on Wednesday after the father, Ali Al Amin, decided not to pursue the charges in court.
Star reporter Tara Brown and her producer, cameramen and sound recordist from Channel Nine's 60 Minutes news team left on the earliest flight out of Beirut after their release from custody.
They arrived in Sydney on Thursday night and were mobbed by a large media scrum as they left the airport via a private exit, and were whisked off in waiting black vans.
“I’m just so glad to be home,” Brown said as she was escorted to a van.
Sound recordist David Ballment said he was looking forward to “a shower and seeing my wife”.
Ms Faulkner remains in Beirut for a custody hearing with her estranged husband.
Ms Faulkner’s lawyer Ghassan Mughabghab said a deal had been struck granting Mr Al Amin full custody of the children in line with Lebanese law.
The commercial Nine network did not mention any deal they were reportedly behind, but announced a full inquiry into the bizarre episode.
The Australian newspaper said "a multimillion-dollar deal was struck to drop abduction charges".
"Nine pays dad to win freedom for crew and mum," Sydney's Daily Telegraph headlined, adding that "a massive sum of cash" had been paid in compensation.
The Sydney Morning Herald said it had cost several hundred thousand dollars, but that an exact figure could not be confirmed.
The crew and Ms Faulkner still face potential charges by Lebanon’s public prosecutor, but they can be sentenced in their absence.
Mr Al Amin’s lawyer Hussein Berjawi said he had not dropped charges against two Britons and two Lebanese allegedly involved in the abduction through a child recovery agency.
It was a disastrous end to the news story they had planned.
“They intended to get away in a boat captained by a member of a private child recovery agency,” a Lebanese security source said.
The crew were arrested April 7, a day after Ms Faulkner’s children were grabbed.
Video shows them walking with an elderly person said to be their grandmother before several figures jump out of a car, shove the adult aside and carry the children off in the vehicle.
Police later found Ms Faulkner with the children, reportedly a six-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy, at a home in Beirut. They were handed back to their father through the courts.
Ms Faulkner accused him of taking them for a holiday to Beirut and then refusing to return them to Australia.
The channel’s handling of the coverage has proved controversial in Australia and prime minister Malcolm Turnbull issued a warning.
“We are very pleased they [the television crew] are on their way home,” he said, “and we want to thank the Lebanese authorities for their cooperation.”
But he added: “All Australians, regardless of what they do or who they work for, should recognise that when they are outside of Australia, they must obey the laws of the country in which they are visiting.”
Nine Network chief executive Hugh Marks pledged to “ascertain what went wrong and why our systems, designed to protect staff, failed to do so in this case”.
"It is important to reiterate that at no stage did anyone from Nine or 60 Minutes intend to act in any way that made them susceptible to charges that they breached the law or to become part of the story that is Sally's story," Mr Marks said. "But we did become part of the story and we shouldn't have.
“What has happened to Sally happens all too often and affects thousands of Australian families,” he said.
“It is a story that not only is profoundly in the public interest but also one the public is interested in.”
The scandal has been a public relations disaster for Channel Nine, which has faced intense backlash in Australia from the public and the media. Many have questioned the station’s ethics for involving itself in a criminal act and over accusations the channel funded the child-snatching operation.
“60 Minutes” has a long history of paying sources for interviews, but the head of the child recovery agency said Channel 9 went much further in this case, directly paying his company to finance the operation. Nine has declined to comment on the allegation.
* Agence France-Presse with additional reporting from Associated Press
