Private investigators hired by Brazilian mother Karin Rachel Aranha Toledo located her son Adam in Egypt, four years after his father took him from Brazil without her permission. Photos taken in April show the boy leaving a property associated with his father’s family alongside his paternal grandmother. They are the latest images Karin has of him.
Karin said Adam appeared to be wearing a cap and mask to avoid being identified. The photos were taken nearly five months after an Egyptian court granted her custody. By then, two attempts to enforce the custody order had failed to find him at the residence.
Although the investigators identified Adam’s whereabouts, he remains with his paternal family. Karin said the information was shared with authorities and Brazil’s diplomatic representation, but that only local authorities can remove the child. Her lawyers have filed a criminal complaint against Adam’s father, Ahmed Tarek Mohamed Faiz Abedelkaleg, and his paternal grandmother, alleging they refused to hand him over to his legal guardian.
The case began in September 2022, when Adam’s father took him to Egypt from Brazil. The boy was four at the time, and Karin says she has not seen him since. In 2023, a federal court in Campinas, Brazil, ordered the father’s pretrial detention, and he was added to Interpol’s wanted list. Karin later moved to Egypt to follow the case.
Egyptian courts also ordered the father and paternal grandmother detained for seven days for failing to comply with the custody order. Karin’s legal team requested that the detention period be increased to six months. At least three attempts to locate Adam under the court order had been unsuccessful, according to the report.
Karin described feeling exhausted and powerless after years of legal proceedings and unsuccessful efforts to recover her son, saying she had tried everything but still had not brought him back.
Sources: G1.