Rescue of Boy, 2, Played Like Thriller

After living an episode worthy of an international espionage thriller, the Arcadia woman who was reunited with her 2-year-old son said Sunday that the bold rescue mission “was the scariest thing” she had ever gone through.

Wired with microphones and tape recorders, Michelle Al-Nasseri, 23, had waited at London’s Heathrow Airport while Scotland Yard agents and former Green Berets coaxed her son from her estranged husband’s arms, minutes after the man’s plane had landed.

Monitored by agents--some of whom she had hired--and waiting for her Iraqi husband to arrive from Jordan on Friday afternoon, Michelle Al-Nasseri said, she felt like a character in a suspense film.

“During those fleeting moments when I could think, I felt like I was watching a movie of someone else,” the paralegal said by telephone from London. “I had never imagined something like this happening to me.”

By the time she had her son back, six weeks after he was taken, her husband was in custody.

Haitham Khalid Al-Nasseri, 33, who had taken their son to Iraq without her knowledge July 21, had been lured to London by a ruse: phone calls and her assurances that she still loved him and was ready to reconcile.

Al-Nasseri, who was being held Sunday in an undisclosed British jail without bail, was to be arraigned in London today.

Michelle Al-Nasseri and their son, Laith Adam, are expected to return to Los Angeles on Tuesday, ending a nightmare that began six weeks ago, when the father said he was taking Laith camping in Santa Barbara.

Michelle Al-Nasseri ultimately helped to put together a rescue mission that involved the former Green Berets commandos, Scotland Yard, the U.S. Embassy in London, the FBI, Arcadia police and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

Within hours after she realized that her husband had cleared out his condo and run off with their son, she called Arcadia police. Although the police notified the FBI, Michelle Al-Nasseri said it took dozens of phone calls to get action.

She asked the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office to extradite her husband. But she said she was told that the chances were slim because Iraq has no diplomatic relations with the United States.

She wrote letters to California’s two U.S. senators, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti and Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, among others.

Only Sen. Boxer responded, she said, and just days after Boxer’s office contacted the district attorney’s office, things started to move.

She was granted sole custody, giving her the legal standing to try to get her son back.

Meanwhile, her elder sister hired Corporate Training Unlimited, an international security organization in North Carolina operated by former Green Berets. The group protects corporate executives working in perilous parts of the world and has also undertaken international child custody rescues.

The security team hatched a plan to get the boy and his father to London. On Sept. 1, Michelle Al-Nasseri arrived in London, accompanied by Judy Feeney, who, with her husband, founded the Green Beret security firm.

They were met by Scotland Yard officials and a representative of the American Embassy and briefed. By the next day, after another briefing, the anxious mother was wired with two tape recorders and escorted to the airport.

Meanwhile, in Jordan, a former Green Beret commando made sure that her husband and son had boarded their plane.

As the surveillance team watched, Michelle Al-Nasseri waited for her husband--shaking so hard that she could not grip her coffee cup--at the meeting place that they had arranged: the American Airlines lounge.

Moments after the plane landed, the husband and son were escorted to a private room, where the agents showed the toddler something to reassure him: a photo of his favorite cousin, and a familiar toy--a Power Ranger.

Walking out of the private room with his toy and photo, he was smiling, his mother said. His first words as she hugged him were, “I want to go see Michael,” the cousin in the picture.

Michelle Al-Nasseri said she was thankful that she didn’t have to face her husband. But she said she is saddened that their love had to end this way.

They met five years ago, when she was 18 and a waitress at Sizzler’s in Alhambra, and he was a civil engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, she said.

Just out of Temple City High School, she wanted to travel and see the world. But Al-Nasseri, who was almost 10 years her senior, wooed her assiduously.

“He was so debonair and so romantic,” she said Sunday. “And he was persistent.”

A year later, she moved in with him, over her family’s objections. Eighteen months later, their son was born.

Their life together was stormy. Al-Nasseri, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was critical of American society and its values and often talked about returning to Iraq. But his wife did not want to leave, nor could she agree to take their son from his comfortable life to war-torn Iraq.

She thought that marriage might improve things, so she prevailed upon him to marry her 18 months ago. But things went from bad to worse. In May, she filed for divorce, and moved in with her widowed mother in Arcadia, while he remained in their Pasadena condo.

They shared custody of the boy, so when her husband said that he was taking the boy camping in Santa Barbara for a weekend in July, she thought nothing of it.

Michelle Al-Nasseri said she has spent more than $15,000 so far to recover her son.

She said that two weeks ago, just days after taking out a $15,000 loan, she was fired from the Arcadia law firm where she worked for losing so much work time--time she spent on finding her son.

But she isn’t discouraged, she said. “I have my son, and I have the support of my family and friends, who have guided me thus far,” she said.

And, despite everything, she had no regrets about the marriage.

“I have my son to show for it,” she said. “This little boy in front of me is so beautiful. I don’t hate my husband. I just hate what he did.”