Canadian woman stuck in Saudi Arabia with abusive husband seeks government help

MONTREAL — Nathalie Morin knows she made a terrible mistake moving to Saudi Arabia with her son in 2005 so they could live with the boy's father.

Four years later, the 24-year-old woman now has three children, and her mother, Johanne Durocher, says she is being held there against her will because her partner has refused to allow her to return to Canada with her children.

In a tearful telephone conversation recorded by her mother, Morin pleads for help in returning home to Canada.

"I know I put myself in this situation, but I want to come back to Canada as soon as possible with my children," a tearful Morin told Durocher during the taped conversation April 6.

Under Saudi law, the children's father has the final say over whether the children can leave.

Durocher, who played the tape for reporters Tuesday at a news conference in Montreal, said Montreal lawyer Julius Grey is planning to launch a lawsuit against the federal government unless Ottawa acts quickly to help her daughter. She claims Foreign Affairs officials and employees at the Canadian embassy in Riyadh haven't done enough to help Morin return home.

Morin told her mother she and the children have been mostly confined to their apartment, expect when her partner, Samir Said Ramthi Al-Bishi, lets them outside.

"I need your support," Morin sobs, before someone hangs up the phone line.

Morin met Al Bishi in Montreal in 2001 through a mutual friend when she was just 17. Their first son was born in Montreal in 2002, three months before Al Bishi was deported after authorities discovered he had been here illegally.

Morin visited Al Bishi twice in Saudi Arabia, before moving there in 2005 with the couple's young son, against Durocher's wishes.

Last fall, Morin's family asked Prime Minister Stephen Harper to intervene in her case, saying her daughter was being preventing from leaving the country with her children.

The Foreign Affairs Department has had extensive contact with Morin, including visits and regular contact to verify her well-being.

Just before Christmas, Deepak Obhrai, the parliamentary secretary to Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, met with Morin and her husband to mediate in the couple's dispute.

The Foreign Affairs website contains a travel advisory on Saudi Arabia that emphasizes that "the father must approve the departure of any children" from the country.