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He told her he was taking them to see his sister, and that they would be home before school started. That was August 29, 2014. Amina Kandil was 10 years old and her brother Belel was 8. Neither of them has been seen in the United States since.

The FBI Norfolk Field Office is asking for the public's assistance in locating Amina Kandil and Belel Kandil missing from James City County, Virginia, since August 29, 2014. At the time of their disappearance, Amina was 10 and Belel was 8 years old.
FBI, Kidnappings and Missing Persons

Two children from Virginia

Amina was born on September 1, 2003, in Augusta, Georgia. Belel was born on January 4, 2006, in the same city. By 2014 the family was in James City County, Virginia, where their mother and father lived separately and shared joint custody.

The FBI descriptions of them are the descriptions of small children. Amina, white, blue eyes, brown hair, about 5 feet 2 inches and 82 pounds. Belel, white, blue eyes, blond hair, about 4 feet 5 inches and 55 pounds.

Those are the last official measurements anyone has. Amina is now 22. Belel is 20.

Thirty six hours

On August 29, 2014, Ahmed Abdallah Taha Kandil collected his two children from their mother's home. He told her they were going to visit his sister out of town and would be back before the school year began.

The next day, August 30, the children were last seen leaving the United States in their father's company, on a flight out of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, bound for Boryspil in Ukraine, and from there to Ataturk in Turkey.

By the time anyone understood what had happened they were already two countries away.

What the courts did

The legal response was fast and it was useless.

On September 5, 2014, a week after the children were collected, the Circuit Court of Williamsburg and James City County granted their mother immediate sole legal custody.

On November 21, 2014, a federal arrest warrant was issued in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Ahmed Kandil was charged with international parental kidnapping. He has been charged, not convicted, and he has never been brought back to answer it.

A custody order and a federal warrant are powerful documents inside the United States. Outside it they are paper, and their force depends entirely on whether the country the children are in agrees to act.

Where they may be

The FBI says the children may be living in the Alexandria, Cairo or Giza areas of Egypt. They may also be in the Hatay region of Turkey. Reporting has put the last known location as Reyhanli, in Hatay Province, close to the Syrian border.

An FBI agent has been quoted saying the possibility that Kandil is in Egypt makes recovery difficult, because Egypt does not treat parental kidnapping as a crime. That is the whole problem in one sentence. There is a warrant, there is a custody order, and there is a jurisdiction where the act underlying both is not an offence.

Theories

Nobody has been convicted here, and information about where the children are is thin, so this is theory.

Investigators have reportedly focused on Egypt in part because Kandil's father is said to own a farm somewhere between Alexandria and Cairo, which would give the family somewhere settled to go.

There is one reported communication. In September 2015, about a year after they left, the children's mother is said to have received an email from Kandil with the subject line "Kids are okay", in which he wrote that they were living on a small farm and that he had taken them abroad before she could obtain full custody. That account comes from an entertainment outlet rather than from the FBI, and it should be weighed accordingly. If it is accurate, it is the last direct word anyone in Virginia had.

Claims circulating on social media that the children have been found are not supported by any credible source. The FBI still carries them as missing.

Where it stands

The FBI Norfolk Field Office is working the case jointly with the James City County Police Department, with assistance from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which produced age progression images showing what Amina and Belel may look like now. Those images are the reason this case is still findable: the children who left JFK in 2014 do not exist any more, and the adults who replaced them are who anyone would actually recognize.

This case sits differently from most in this forum. There are no remains, no crime scene, no cause of death. The most likely fact about Amina and Belel Kandil is that they are alive, somewhere, as adults, and that they may have spent more of their lives outside the United States than in it.

Amina Kandil, born September 1, 2003, and Belel Kandil, born January 4, 2006
Taken: August 29, 2014, James City County, Virginia
Last seen: August 30, 2014, departing JFK for Ukraine and then Turkey
Sole custody granted to their mother: September 5, 2014
Federal warrant: November 21, 2014, international parental kidnapping, charging Ahmed Abdallah Taha Kandil
Possible locations: Alexandria, Cairo or Giza in Egypt; Hatay region, Turkey
Status: both children still missing

Anyone with information can contact the FBI Norfolk Field Office at 757-455-0100, submit a tip at tips.fbi.gov, or contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-843-5678.