What we lose in the Shadows (A father and daughter True Crime Podcast)
What we lose in the Shadows (A father and daughter True Crime Podcast)
Amina and Belel Kandil
A tale of love, betrayal and international parental kidnapping.
https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/documentaries/true-crime/where-is-ahmed-kandil-belel-amina-unsolved-mysteries/
https://thecinemaholic.com/where-is-rebecca-downey-now-unsolved-mysteries-update/
Unsolved mysteries: a Netflix series, volume 3, episode 9
Contact us at: whatweloseintheshadows@gmail.com
Background music by Michael Shuller Music
Good evening and welcome to What We Lose in the Shadows.
Speaker 2:A father-daughter true crime podcast.
Speaker 1:My name is James Keyes.
Speaker 2:I'm Caroline. Before we jump into the story today, i wanted to come on here and say happy pride to everyone who celebrates, and that we appreciate our allies too, just like you.
Speaker 1:My thank you.
Speaker 2:Today's trigger warnings are child abduction and domestic mental and emotional abuse. Today's case is a tough one and I know I say that often, but if I'm being honest, they really all are. We will be talking about a child abduction case today. Like I mentioned in the trigger warning, to have something happen to a loved one is truly unimaginable, and when that loved one is your child, it must be a personal hell. I feel for every parent and guardian that is to go through this, and I hope you know you're not alone. There are strangers out there like us wishing for their safe return as well. The case we'll be discussing today is that of Amina and Belal Kandil. To discuss them, i want to discuss their parents first.
Speaker 2:Their mom, rebecca Downey, was born in Berlin, germany. She moved to the United States of America and became a citizen. When she was 28 years old she was going to apply to medical school. That was when she met her now ex-husband, amid Kandil. He was born in Cairo, egypt. He came to the US and also became a citizen. He was in the finance field and when he met Rebecca he was 30 years old. The two were an athletic couple and they participated in many sports during their time dating. Rebecca explains that Ahmed was a nice guy and felt like they had a lot in common because of their middle class upbringing. She said they had a lot of the same values because of their experiences growing up. They dated for a few years before getting married and having their first child, amina.
Speaker 2:Amina Kandil was born September 1st 2003. Rebecca was in medical school at the time, which I personally can't even imagine being a parent giving birth and being in school, medical school especially. She's obviously a very impressive woman to be able to juggle all of that. Amil Kandil was born a few years later, on January 4th 2006. Rebecca was in between her second and third year of medical school.
Speaker 2:At this point, rebecca describes both of her children on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, and I'm going to read her description of them so we can understand how amazing they really were and how important they were to her. She said Amina is such a warm person. She's a little more shy than her brother, but she has this core of inner strength that comes through every once in a while. Belal is more outward and fun-oriented in a lot of ways. He engaged with everyone During the financial crisis of 2008,.
Speaker 2:Ahmed lost his job. Rebecca describes his mood as having changed permanently for the worse. He became negative. His thoughts around his wife changed. He only thought of Rebecca as a mom and did not want to have conversations with her any longer about anything else. Mind you, rebecca is the only one working and keeping the family afloat. It's very annoying because here she is juggling everything while he's pushing her away to deal with his own feelings of inadequacy, and this is why it's so important to have a positive self-image, unattached to things regarding work and school. No matter what happens at work or school, you are still you. You still have positive qualities and should be engaging with yourself and building yourself up. I understand that when people lose their jobs, things become stressful, especially if you have a family, but that's when you do what you need to do. You get a job at the coffee shop or you discuss with your spouse if you can stay home with the kids. What people should not do is push everyone away in sulk.
Speaker 1:Right, but that's kind of a male thing. I mean, men traditionally have tied completely their identity to their job or their identity to the ability to take care of the family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's bad for everyone.
Speaker 1:It's bad for everyone because it's a lonely position, especially if things are going bad And if your first instinct is to push away the one person who's trying to help you, then that's destructive in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2:Rebecca decided that, because she was unhappy after years of this and he wasn't engaging with her at all except about the children, that she wanted to get a divorce, and the two were separated in June 2013. The two had arranged a custody agreement for seeing their children. Ahmed made it difficult for Rebecca to see the children, though. This is something that really pisses me off too, because for the children to grow up happy and healthy, it's important for them to have a good support system, and for him to make it difficult for his children to see their own mother is not only hurting Rebecca, but also the children. Right, and it's common for abusers to do this. They'll happily upset everyone in close proximity, even their own children, just to hurt the person that they were abusing. When the two were separated, ahmed became very involved with religion, which, for him, was the Muslim faith Religion any religion can have positive or negative impacts on people.
Speaker 2:When it brings people together, i'm all here for it, but when it makes people angry and hateful, that's where problems come in. And I feel like this all goes back to his negative self image. You know, if he had, like, a positive view of himself, maybe he'd be less likely to lash out at all of those around him, specifically Rebecca.
Speaker 1:For sure.
Speaker 2:So this brings us to Labor Day weekend 2014. Ahmed came to pick up the kids to go on a trip. The plan was to go up with their cousins up to Toronto to visit a college because one of their cousins was going to go to school there. They were supposed to be back September 1st, which was a Monday and also was Amina's birthday and she was turning 11. Rebecca wasn't able to get through to them most of the weekend And when Amina's birthday came and they were supposed to be back, rebecca called Ahmed. No answer. This is when she started to worry. She wanted to tell her daughter happy birthday. She chopped it up to him being passive, aggressive and not allowing her to tell Amina on her actual birthday. And I'd like to add that that's fucking abusive behavior and it's unacceptable. No parent should block contact from the other parent to their children, and there are exceptions to this, of course, like if the parent is being abusive to the children, then yes.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:When the next day came, it was the kids' first day of school. Rebecca thought that if the kids went to school and they were dropped off like everything would be okay, like she thought everything was just normal and he was just giving her the cold shoulder. However, when she reached out to the kids' schools, they had never been dropped off. And this is when the fear set in for Rebecca. She was concerned about where her kids were. She was on the job when she called to check and see if they had made it to school too, and she was the only anesthesiologist at her clinic.
Speaker 2:She was unable to leave, so she started making calls. She called the police station, she called all the hospitals in Toronto just in case they had an accident, and finally she called Ahmed's father in Giza, egypt. The father's response was that he didn't know where they were And he wasn't worried. And she shouldn't be worried either. Rebecca took this as a huge red flag that something was very wrong. Rebecca called her friend, so her friend goes over to Ahmed's house and finds the entire place cleared out.
Speaker 1:Oh, no, he ran.
Speaker 2:Yes. She looked through the windows to see all the furniture had been vacated and nothing was left inside. She told Rebecca what she found, and that was when Rebecca went into a panic mode. She had no idea what was going on or where her children were. That Friday, eight days after Rebecca had last seen her children, she was contacted by the police. The police told her that they had located their flight records, and this is when things get really crazy. They never had flights to Canada. They flew to Kiev, then to Istanbul, turkey.
Speaker 2:The FBI was contacted and became involved because this was obviously a case of kidnapping. The Eastern District of Virginia then issued an arrest warrant for Ahmed for two counts of international parental kidnapping. The FBI searched deeply into Ahmed's background and it became very clear that this was a premeditated case of kidnapping. He had purchased camping gear, boots for the children, went to survivalist camps to prepare, learned how to shoot guns, all of which Rebecca describes as very out of character for him. When she knew him In December 2014, the tablet that the children had taken with them on what was supposed to be a long weekend trip piqued.
Speaker 2:The tablet was tracked to the Hatay province, close to Rahelani, which is a southern town in Turkey next to Syria. Rebecca was terrified at this point because at that time the location was very close to a war zone. After seeing his financial records of learning how to shoot guns and acquire a camping gear, she thought her kids could very well be in danger. Despite Rebecca's several inquiries to congressmen, senators, her working with private detectives here and abroad, nothing pointed them any closer to her finding her children or Ahmed.
Speaker 1:So is she thinking at this point that he is camped out somewhere in the desert near Syria?
Speaker 2:I think so, or something like that, like she has no idea Because, if you think about it, his parents are in Egypt.
Speaker 1:They're in Egypt. but that would be an easy. You would guess that right. You would think okay, mm-hmm, and the grandfather you would have to think because of that kind of cryptic responses, i'm not worried. neither should you be. That means to me he knows something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he knows where they are. Like this has been planned a long way in advance, exactly. So one year later, no, speaking to our children. I really can't imagine I don't have kids.
Speaker 1:Oh, i mean, that would be The worst possible thing to happen, yeah.
Speaker 2:September 30th 2015, rebecca checked her email to find the most infuriating email from her ex Ahmed. She read the subject line, which said kids are well.
Speaker 1:God a man.
Speaker 2:A few words, I guess yeah, in the email He describes how the children are doing well, enjoying life on a farm with a variety of different animals, and He switches to gaslighting her by saying that she left him no choice but to take the children.
Speaker 1:That was her fault. Oh yeah, of course, obviously.
Speaker 2:He said that he knew that she would find a job somewhere else and take full custody of the kids. So he took them. He said when they're old enough and can understand right from wrong, they'll contact her.
Speaker 2:Rebecca was happy that her children were alive, but so he says so he says exactly, but obviously She knew that a med was trying to brainwash them and not wanting to talk to their mother in the future. The email address was found to come from Mahali as well, where the iPad pinged. Rebecca worked with the Turkish detective, who searched for the children and the IP address that the email came from, and It's believed that the email was sent from an internet cafe in Rahulani. That was all. The detective was able to find out about the case though.
Speaker 2:The next year, just two years, rebecca was informed that Ahmed had applied for Egyptian citizenship And had his address listed as his parents address in Giza. Rebecca hired an Egyptian investigator to look for her children and try and find Ahmed's parents prom. The detective came up and de-handed. I'm sure you're thinking why doesn't Rebecca just go to Egypt and find her kids? But she wanted to, of course, but she was warned against doing so. She was told it wasn't safe because in Egypt, parental kidnapping is not a crime. There in Egypt, and in a lot of countries, the father can decide the children's fate, not the courts. So the mother has no say. So if she were to go there, the police and FBI Investigators told her that she could be brought up on charges of whatever Ahmed wanted to make up and then jailed for the foreseeable future At the least.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:Rebecca's support system believes that Ahmed told the children that their mother was dead or Perhibits them from using the internet. They said that they were a close knit unit, the three of them, so something must have been said to them for them not to be searching for her right.
Speaker 1:What year is this in?
Speaker 2:so this was Labor Day weekend, 2014. As of now, it has been nine years since Rebecca has seen or heard from her children. Rebecca writes to her children in a journal daily to push through the grief of not being able to contact them and raise them. I Personally don't have children, although one day I would like to, and I really can't imagine the pain of not being able to talk to your children Do them being taken.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. It's like Your children become it up. I'm not an actual anatomical Part of you, but from a emotional and psyche standpoint, you know they're, they're, they're just as real and just as you know necessary, as you know your, your hands or your arms, or you know I mean it's, and to have someone forcibly remove that.
Speaker 2:I mean it's beyond It's cruel, it's cruel.
Speaker 1:It's cruelty on a whole different level.
Speaker 2:I mean it's, it's insane abuse, because it's been nine years That she hasn't had contact right and your children have grown up without her. I just, i really.
Speaker 1:There's. There's actually a movie I think Sally Fields did a movie called not without my child, and it was something similar that there seems to have been a A rush of people doing exactly that's to two different places around the planet that maybe don't hold women in such high esteem. Right The that she would there try to get her children back.
Speaker 2:It's, it's a very interesting. She wasn't able to.
Speaker 1:I think in the end She was, but she took some insane risks in the meantime Actually going there right, exactly, but like she could be stuck there or killed.
Speaker 2:You know, if she does go, so it's like it.
Speaker 2:She can't right knowing they're out there and Unable to talk to you is something I really can't imagine. It's so unfair to Rebecca and the kids. On our Instagram You can find pictures of the children from then and what they're believed to look like now. We'll also link Rebecca's website to our podcast in the show notes and on Instagram. If you have any knowledge about what happened or where they could be, please contact the FBI at 1-800-225-5324 or 1-800-CALL-FBI. Follow the show on whatever streaming site you're listening on and remember.
Speaker 1:All of the source material will be available in the show notes and.
Speaker 2:Follow us on Instagram at what we lose in the shadows and let us know if you want to hear a specific case.
Speaker 1:Or if you just want to give us some feedback.
Speaker 2:Okay, join us in the shadows next Tuesday. Bye.
