October 21, 2009 - The Daily Star - Abducted MEA employee's family appeals for safe return

By Dalila Mahdawi
Daily Star staff

BEIRUT/MAGDOUSHEH: Efforts to find a Middle East Airlines (MEA) employee kidnapped eight months ago must bear fruit, his friends and family said on Tuesday. Family members, neighbors and colleagues of Joseph Sader gathered outside the MEA headquarters near Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport in the sweltering midday heat to pray for his safe release and demand greater transparency to the government investigation into his abduction.
Fifty-six-year-old Sader, an Information Technology manager and father of three, was abducted on February 12 as he walked to work, allegedly by three unidentified assailants who forced him into a sport utility vehicle.

Sader’s hometown of Magdousheh, near Sidon, came to a standstill as locals boarded up their shops to attend the protest.

“We are here to ask the government to make their investigation more effective and to give us proof of who took him,” Sader’s wife Salma said. She described her husband as a friendly, apolitical person and was incredulous that anyone would have purposely targeted him. “If Joseph could be kidnapped then it means everyone is a target because Joseph was not political. He had no problems with anyone,” she said.

MEA, where Sader has worked since 1982, issued a statement complaining there had been little progress in the official investigation into their colleagues’ abduction. “All we’ve received are hollow promises that reveal nothing about the case. We feel personally concerned in this case … we will not accept that this case is ignored or forgotten,” the airline’s union said.

A Magdousheh resident, who wished to be identified by the name Abou Georges, also said he was frustrated by the confusing picture being painted by the authorities. “We want the truth to be revealed and the guessing to stop.”

Al-Liwaa newspaper and OTV on Monday reported comments by Archbishop Elie Haddad, pastor of Sidon and Deir al-Qamar’s Roman Catholic Melkite Church, who said a religious source from another sect had told him Sader was alive and being detained by an “unofficial military” group in Lebanon other than Hizbullah.

The MEA official’s abductors were at odds with one another over whether to release Sader, turn him over to the Lebanese authorities or continue detaining him for further investigation into his possible involvement in an Israeli spy cell, Haddad claimed. “I was told that he witnessed some of the events that may have been the cause of the espionage,” Haddad told OTV.

Responding to the archbishop’s remarks, Sader’s nephew George said while he believed Hizbullah did not kidnap Sader, the group could have information about his whereabouts. “We are sure that if he’s not with Hizbullah, they at least know where he is just by the fact he was abducted in an area they control,” he said. – Additional reporting by Mohammed Zaatari