
After three years and four months, Sydney mum Iryna Tarakan is finally reunited with her two sons who were taken to Lebanon by their father.
“I fell on my knees and I hugged him and started to cry and scream. I was pretty emotional,” Tarakan, 33, told The Australian about seeing her youngest son Michael – the last to be returned to her – for the first time last month, after three years apart.
“He didn’t hug me, his eyes were wide open, he was shocked,”
The story bears remarkable similarities to that of Brisbane mum Sally Faulkner, who enlisted the help of television program 60 Minutes to kidnap her two children from Lebanon in April 2016 after her former husband took them for a “holiday” never to return.
The botched operation ended in the arrest and lucky release of Faulkner and the journalists involved, including high-profile presenter Tara Brown.
Faulkner is now forbidden to call or Skype her children, Lahela and Noah who remain in Lebanon, and she’s still facing kidnapping charges, the ABC reports.
And while Tarakan’s fight to have her children returned echoes that of Faulkner’s, this time there is a different ending.
Sally Faulkner speaks to Mia Freedman about her inherent fear her children wouldn’t recognise her. Post continues below.
Tarakan told The Australian the ordeal started when her estranged husband, Tony Sukkar, called her one Monday after Christmas in 2014 asking if he could keep the boys, Ghattas and Michael (aged two and five at the time), just one more night.