The taxi driver of the missing Czechs allegedly has a brother detained in Prague
The taxi driver, from where five Czechs in eastern Lebanon disappeared, is the brother of a man detained in Prague last year on suspicion of collaborating with terrorists. The Lebanese Voice radio station announced in Beirut. The fact that Ali Fayyad, one of the three Lebanese detained in Prague and awaiting extradition to the USA, is the brother of the taxi driver Saib Munir Taan, according to Lebanese radio, members of his family confirmed.
Taán, 50, was driving a car from which five Czechs had disappeared in the Bikaa Valley in eastern Lebanon. Police found abandoned luggage in the car with their money and video cameras on Saturday. The driver also disappeared from the vehicle. According to reports from the Lebanese agency NNA, the Czechs apparently did not kidnap unknown people in an attempt to organize an exchange for Fayyad. Until now, it was believed that Taana and Fayyad had only the fact that they came from the same village.
The connection between the Lebanese incident and Fajád detained in Prague and today’s Blesk report, according to which one of the unmarried Czechs was the second interpreter and probably a lawyer in the Fajád trial in Prague. The source does not list your information.
The NNA reported that the Lebanese army was searching local hotels and had set up checkpoints in the Bikaa Valley to find the unmarried people. So far, there are no reports that the search was successful.
The Bikáa Valley, where five Czechs disappeared
They wanted to sell weapons and cocaine to agents
The United States blames Ali Fayyad and his two fellow Faouzi Jaber and Khalid Marabi for wanting to sell weapons and cocaine to American agents who pretended to be members of the Colombian terrorist organization FARC. The trio denies guilt and their extradition, in the USA it threatens life.
In June this year, however, the Prague High Court overturned a decision on the admissibility of their extradition to the United States on the grounds that the United States had not given sufficient guarantees that the men would not be subjected to inhuman treatment in prison. The Municipal Court in Prague will thus have to request clarification from the USA.
Jaber and Marabi come from Ivory Coast, Fayyad is a Lebanese with Ukrainian citizenship. The Czech Ministry of Justice must give its final consent to the extradition of men.
| Cases of Czechs not carried abroad |
|---|
| Selection of cases of Czech abductions, resp. Czechoslovak citizens abroad since the early 1980s: |
| March 13, 1983 – Members of the rebel National Union for the Full Independence of Angola (UNITA) abducted 66 Czechoslovak citizens who worked in a paper mill in Alto Catumbel, Angola. The kidnappers demanded political recognition. The abductees had to undergo a 1,200-kilometer march. After 4.5 months, the kidnappers released women, children and a weak man. The remaining people were released after 468 days. |
| May 26, 1995 – Three Czech soldiers, along with 270 other UNPROFOR peacekeepers, used Bosnian Serbs Pale near Sarajevo to deflect NATO’s impending air strikes. Major Karel Krátký and Captain Oldřich Židlík were released after 24 days, Major Zlatko Kožušník was released after 19 days of capture. |
| December 17, 1996 – Czech Chargé d’Affaires in Peru Lubomír Hladík was among more than 600 people captured at a party at the residence of the Japanese Embassy in Lima. The militants of the Tupak Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), who demanded members of the movement for prisoners, gradually released the hostages, including Hladík. Peruvian security forces released the remaining 72 hostages on April 22, 1997. |
| February 19, 1998 – Lt. Col. Jaroslav Kulíšek and three other staff members of the United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) have been abducted by armed assailants in the West Georgian village of Jichashkari. While two Uruguayans and a Swede were released by opponents of President Eduard Shevardnadze, Kulisek managed to escape on February 25. |
| September 29, 1999 – Two employees of the People in Need Foundation, Milan Machalíček and Michal Plavec, detained a crowd from the Serbian enclave of Štrpka in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo. The KFOR troops managed to free the humanitarian workers after a few hours. |
| October 13, 1999 – In the east of Georgian Abkhazia, in the Kodori Valley, a group of six UN observers (UNOMIG) from the Czech Republic, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece, Germany and Uruguay was abducted. The kidnappers demanded a ransom of $ 250,000. The next day, the kidnappers released four hostages, including a Czech observer, the rest the next day. |
| April 11, 2004 – In Iraq, three Czech journalists were abducted on their way to Amman, Jordan – Michal Kubal and Petr Klíma from Czech Television and Vít Pohanka from Czech Radio. They were released five days after negotiations with the kidnappers. |
| December 7, 2005 – Czech missionary Roman Musil was abducted in Haiti. He worked on the island for several years. Representatives of the Catholic Church negotiated with the kidnappers, who had to look for a $ 50,000 ransom. Musil was released for not paying on December 10, 2005. |
| March 11, 2010 – Two unmarried humanitarian workers in Haiti have been released. A Czech worker from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and her Belgian colleague spent almost a week in captivity by unknown kidnappers. Women who help in the country after the devastating earthquake attacked the kidnappers in the suburbs of Port-au-Prince. |
| January 18, 2011 – The Yemeni police thwarted an attempted abduction of four Czech tourists. She struck against three kidnappers when they tried to take their victims to the mountains. |
| March 22, 2012 – The Czech guide spent two hours in captivity of the Bedouin on the night of March 22 on the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. A group of masked men kidnapped her when she hijacked a bus with Czech tourists who accompanied the woman. According to the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the woman was liberated by Egyptian security forces in cooperation with local Bedouin tribes from southern Sinai. |
| March 13, 2013 – Two Czech women (Antonie Chrástecká and Hana Humpálová) were abducted by unknown militants in the southwestern Pakistani province of Baluchistan, where they came from Iran as tourists and wanted to continue to India. The Turkish NGO IHH contributed to their release two years later; he returned to the Czech Republic at the end of March this year. |
| March 6, 2015 – After the attack of Islamic radicals on the Ghanaian oil field in Libya, nine people working for the Austrian company VAOS were abducted – an Austrian, four Filipinos, two Bangladeshis, a Ghanaian and a Czech citizen. Two Bangladeshis and a Ghanaian have already been released from captivity. The fate of others not carried, including the Czech Republic, is unclear. |
| July 18, 2015 – The Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star reported the disappearance of five Czechs in the east of the country. According to the letter, Czechs aged 25 to 47 may have been abducted. At the end of September 2013, the Lebanese police were looking for a Czech tourist who was also missing. The forty-six-year-old man went on a trip and, for poor visibility, fell into a deep valley and died. |
