He said he has spoken to the children, now 7 and 11, only by telephone in the years that they have been gone. He recalled speaking to his eldest son soon after he went to Egypt.
"He said, "When are you and Pop coming to get me? I'm not in America anymore.' Then six months later, he says, `I hope bulldozers knock your house down.' They've been fully brainwashed over the past six years."
At the time of their disappearance, Michael Shannon had custody of Adam, and Nermeen Khalifa Shannon had custody of Jason. Each parent had visitation rights with the other child. Shannon was later awarded custody of Jason, too.
Afaf Khalifa served a three-year sentence, and was subsequently deported for helping her daughter abduct Adam from the United States. Nermeen Khalifa Shannon, who holds dual Egyptian and American citizenship, will face criminal charges if she returns to the United States.
William C. Brennan Jr., a Prince George's County lawyer who represents the Khalifa family, did not respond yesterday to several messages seeking comment. Brennan argued in his appeal of the Anne Arundel Circuit Court's December 2006 judgment that Michael Shannon needed to show a financial loss of services from not having his sons, that he had no standing to complain about the loss of visitation of his youngest son, of whom he didn't initially have custody, and that the $3 million award was disproportionately large.
Michael Shannon said the Khalifas, a wealthy family with multimillion-dollar homes throughout the Middle East and Switzerland, also own property in the United States. But he added that they may have sold it to avoid paying the judgment. That could not be verified yesterday.
"We have a clear plan in place with respect to the award," said Stephen J. Cullen, one of Shannon's attorneys. "Obviously, I don't want to show my hand. My personal experience dealing with various people in the Egyptian government, including a face-to-face meeting with a representative of the Egyptian government at The Hague in the Netherlands in 2006, is that they would like to resolve this case."
He heralded the decision as a victory for Maryland parents.
"Until this case was issued today, it was not clear whether a parent who was left behind in this state after their children were abducted to another state or country, had any way of suing an abusing parent," said Cullen. "These parental abductions are becoming a blight on our society. Parents are moving children from state to state, moving them overseas, left, right and center."
Morley said Egypt is not among the more than 70 countries, including the United States, that are part of the Hague Convention on the civil aspects of international child abduction, which requires those countries to return abducted children to the country of their habitual residence. He said that civil remedies to international child abduction cases, as taken by Michael Shannon, are relatively unheard of, and mostly not very effective.
"It sounds to me like Maryland courts are really trying to get tough on these cases," Morley said.
nicole.fuller@baltsun.com
