Mother wants Obama to help get kids back
MIDLOTHIAN | Father fled with 4 girls to West Bank, she says

July 22, 2008Recommend

BY MAUREEN O'DONNELL Staff Reporter/modonnell@suntimes.com
A Midlothian mom is hoping Sen. Barack Obama's trip to the Mideast will shine light on what she says amounts to the kidnapping of her four young daughters by her estranged Palestinian husband.

Colleen Davis Bargouthi held a news conference Monday to appeal to Obama to visit her daughters, ages 6 to 11, who are living with her husband in the West Bank. She said he has plans for the girls after high school to wed cousins in arranged marriages.

RELATED STORIESMother asks Obama for help in recovering daughters

Bargouthi, 36, said she met Yasser Shibli Bargouthi, 38, when he was in the United States on a student visa. They married in 1994 and had daughters Emily, 11; Hannah, 8; Amanda, 6, and Sarah, 5. The marriage was troubled, she said, but she never expected him to take the children.

She said her nightmare began in 2007, when a family visit to her in-laws near Ramallah stretched to 10 months. Her husband announced they were there to stay, she said. Bargouthi said she was kept a virtual prisoner in her in-laws' home. She said her husband hit her and menaced her with guns, saying he could kill her.

He kicked her out of the house and told her he would return the girls if she went home and found a job and a place for the family, she said. She returned to the United States in May with her son from her first marriage, Ricky, 15. She found work as a cabdriver.

Yasser Shibli Bargouthi has since told her the girls will never leave, she said. She calls every other day, but "I'm only allowed to speak with the speakerphone on. If Yasser hears me say anything he disapproves of, he will disconnect the phone call." He is also planning to remarry, she said.

Bargouthi, flanked by international-law attorneys, said she's repulsed by her in-laws' talk of arranged marriages for the girls to cousins. "It's not only immoral, it's unhealthy, and it's against the law in most places,'' she said.

Her younger daughters are already losing their English, she said. But one told her mother she didn't like her new bed, saying: " 'It feels like a doughnut -- it's empty in the middle without you.' "

Obama's office said the senator "has been working with the State Department on behalf of Ms. Bargouthi. Our office will do everything in its power to ensure that the State Department gives this case the attention that it deserves."

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/o ... 2.article#