Reunion After Rescue : Woman Returns With Boy Who Was Taken by Father to Iraq

An Arcadia woman who retrieved her kidnaped son by acting out an international spy-thriller role returned home Tuesday admitting she is worried that her boy may be stolen again.

Michelle Al-Nasseri and 2-year-old Laith Adam were reunited with tearful family members after traveling from London where her estranged Iraqi husband was arrested on a child-stealing charge after being duped into meeting her there.

“The fight is not over,” Al-Nasseri, 23, said as her laughing and smiling son was hugged and kissed by relatives and friends at Los Angeles International Airport.

“I’m still in fear that in the future there’s a possibility and a probability that my husband will be granted not only visitation rights but unmonitored visitation rights. I’ll deal with that when it comes. . . . My son should not be subjected to the situation that he was in a few weeks ago.”

Laith Adam was allegedly abducted and spirited to Iraq six weeks ago by Haitham Khalid Al-Nasseri, 33, after he picked up the boy for a court-authorized weekend visit. Haitham Al-Nasseri, who was a civil engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, had told his wife he was taking the child camping in the Santa Barbara area.

The pair’s disappearance prompted an international search by Al-Nasseri and her family that ended last Friday at London’s Heathrow Airport. Assisted by a group of ex-Green Berets, the FBI and Scotland Yard detectives, Al-Nasseri lured her husband and son to Britain under the guise of a reconciliation.

Michelle Al-Nasseri was wired with microphones so authorities could listen in. She said she was worried that her husband would leave their son in Baghdad for the trip.

“I was just scared that he knew I was conspiring with the local authorities as well as the FBI and outside officials to entrap him,” she said Tuesday.

“It had taken four weeks to convince him I was willing to reconcile and willing to reunite with him outside of Iraq. I had to be the best actress ever,” she said.

The paralegal said that a month into her ordeal, she was fired from her law firm job for spending too much time looking for her son. Helping her were the Arcadia police, FBI and a security firm called Corporate Training Unlimited that concocted the reconciliation ploy.

Her sister, Lisa Yanez of Temple City, heard about the firm on a television program and hired it after Michelle Al-Nasseri took out a $15,000 loan to pay expenses.

Charlie Parsons, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, credited Al-Nasseri’s perseverance for the boy’s safe return.

“Michelle pulled it off with her actress ability. That was the sting--it wasn’t very sophisticated at all, but it worked.

“We have here a very courageous mother who was extremely determined to get her child back no matter what she had to do. Our hat is off to her and we applaud her,” Parsons said.

Although Laith Adam wore an FBI baseball cap and T-shirt upon his return, the FBI official acknowledged the role of Corporate Training’s ex-Green Berets--who monitored Al-Nasseri’s telephone negotiations with her husband.

“Success has a thousand fathers. A lot of people contributed to this outcome,” Parsons said. “It’s a very problematic situation when you’re trying to get somebody back from Iraq. We don’t have the greatest relations with Saddam Hussein”--or an extradition treaty.

Parsons said a federal warrant charging Haitham Al-Nasseri with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution will be dropped once he is extradited to Los Angeles to face child-stealing charges.

Robert Budman, a deputy Los Angeles County prosecutor in charge of the district attorney’s child abduction office, said Haitham Al-Nasseri could face three years in state prison and a $10,000 fine.

“At the moment, we’re intending to pursue prosecution as a felony,” Budman said.

But he said Al-Nasseri may be right about her husband eventually regaining visitation rights.

“Generally, courts figure the child is better off with both parents in the picture,” Budman said.