The Beginning Of My Ascendance - April 22nd, 2007
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My Sister, Nicole Vienneau, Has Gone Missing in Syria
Summary (*Bi-Weekly Blog Updates are further down the page*)
My sister, Jacqueline "Nicole" Vienneau, a Canadian tourist, disappeared in Syria on Saturday, March 31st, 2007 at the age of 32. She was in her fifth month of a six-month solo adventure through West Africa and the Middle East. She was last seen by the desk clerk at 8:30 in the morning as she left the Cairo Hotel in Hama, two hours north of Damascus.
She definitely intended to return to the hotel as her backpack was left in her room along with the memory cards from her camera, full of photos. She also left her journals that include an entry made the night before she disappeared. Canadian police retrieved her Hotmail account email records indicating she attempted to login around 8:30 Friday night but was unable to (Syrian Internet connections are not reliable). Her last completed emails were sent Thursday night.
Nicole's guidebook was also left in her room. In the back of her Lonely Planet "Middle East" guidebook she wrote directions to a number of places in Syria that we believe she copied from the Cairo Hotel's copy of the Lonely Planet "Syria" guidebook. Nicole spoke with some guests about these locations earlier in the week and the hotel clerk indicating that on the morning she disappeared, she asked for directions to the "Beehive Houses", a local sightseeing destination, as well as Qasr Ibn Wardan (a nearby castle).
No one at these locations recalls seeing Nicole (and they are not heavily visited) and the Qasr Ibn Wardan logbook has a record of only one visitor, Amin Ben Yahia, a person of interest to us (b. 1984, Algerian/Swiss nationality, father is Abbas, mother is Monica) in hopes that he remembers something unusual about that day.
Nicole preferred taking local transit, but none of the minibus drivers or locals remembers seeing her. As a foreigner, Nicole stood out in all of Syria, but particularly in Hama where the majority of women in Hama dress in robes and cover their hair. The streets from the hotel to the minibus pick-up are main streets with lots of people, even at 8:30 in the morning.
In May 2007, I flew to Syria with Nicole's fiancé Gary to re-trace her steps and meet with police and local officials. Gary spent an additional two months criss-crossing Syria searching for clues. My mother joined Gary in Syria in July 2007 and met with the Grand Mufti as well as the Minister of the Interior. She also made a personal plea on Syrian television and we put ads in the newspapers and local flyers. Gary and my mother returned to Syria in April 2008 to raise awareness and follow up on leads with officials and the police.
My mother returned to Syria with Gary for a third visit in March 2009 and we continue to work with Syrian government and police officials on the investigation.
There is up to 2,250,000 Syrian pounds ($45,000) in reward money for information leading us to Nicole.
We are currently looking for other guests at the Cairo Hotel in case they spoke with Nicole. A list is at the bottom of this page.
For pictures of Nicole and what she was wearing when she disappeared, as well as relevant personal information and summaries of the search so far, please visit:
http://www.findnicolevienneau.com/
From the "official" website, you can also submit anonymous tips, make donations towards the search, view the picture gallery and download posters and Nicole's notes. Arabic versions of most pages are also available. Public comments can be made here to the blog.
You can always email me directly and anonymously at mattv99@hotmail.com
All comments and emails, public and private, are read immediately, but unfortunately I cannot respond to everyone. Feel free to respond in any language that you're comfortable with, though all of my responses will likely be in English.
November 1st (Evening):
One of Syria's goals these days (and pretty much every other country in the world) is to increase tourism. As such, every time my mom reads articles like this one extolling the virtues of Syria, she wants to contact the writer and clarify that it's not necessarily as safe as you think, and if something goes wrong, not too much may be done about it.
The article link was sent by a reader who also wrote to the editor of the Guardian (the newspaper that published it) saying that a bit more balance to the reporting would be good (though travel articles aren't generally all that objective and are mostly funded by the place being visited). It may help to have people contact the Guardian, if only because our search hasn't had any exposure in the United Kingdom.
And it does get us wondering how much this affects our search. When the (former) Minister of Justice says Nicole is just "having an adventure" two years after she disappeared, it's tough to think that he isn't concerned about his country's image. Quite frankly, I think the best thing for the image of Syria would be to find Nicole and show that while problems happen anywhere, you're in good care in Syria. It worries me that maybe they can't do that because finding Nicole exposes a wider web of deceit and corruption.
Speaking of two years, Nicole left on her trip exactly three years ago today. She is now two and half years late.
A friend of Nicole's pointed out that the latest version of the Lonely Planet (3rd 2008) for Syria no longer recommends the Citadel Hotel in Palmyra, where Nicole stayed. But it's hard to tell if that's because the place has gotten worse, or because the writer of the second edition that Nicole was using just wasn't very good (it appears he/she may not have done as thorough a job as one would like, especially looking at the errors and so on that we found).
October 14th (Evening):
A few months ago my mom submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the Canadian government for all the documents they had on Nicole. As I may have mentioned before, a key document had gone missing between Syria and Canada and so we wanted to make sure there weren't any more that we hadn't seen. The government insisted we submit a formal request for the information.
This past week the government got back to my mom and said they can't release information relating to me, or Gary or anyone else in the family involved unless we each give our explicit written consent. So each of us had to hurriedly mail a letter to Ottawa giving approval. An incredibly frustrating process.
Here in Toronto the backpack of the missing 17-year old girl was found and the police immediately set up a command post nearby so they can talk to all the people in the area and search for clues. This is exactly what should have happened in Syria when Nicole went missing, let alone when we reported her missing a month later. But instead we were assigned a single detective from the local force. Is it any surprise that she hasn't been found?
A devoted volunteer reviewed all the blog entries and mentioned a point from way back - the Cairo Hotel reported Nicole missing on April 2nd and the "political police" (there are a half dozen or so different types of police in Syria, similar to FBI, local police, CIA in the States) investigated and apparently decided it wasn't a political disappearance by April 6th or 8th.
Notwithstanding the *incredible* frustration of the political police investigating but not telling the Canadian Embassy, it struck our volunteer as odd that the Syrians were able to "clear" Nicole so quickly. This is someone who has been travelling and meeting people for the past five months, including a few days in neighbouring Lebanon and Jordan, and they checked it all out that quickly?
It's possible that they just verified she'd been to the typical tourist spots and hadn't been noted by anyone, but if they have all these kind of information, why did it take so long for them to even verify whether she was still in the country when we came looking for her? There seem to be gaps in this story, but I don't know if that's because our information is wrong, our understanding of how things work is wrong, or if there's something being hidden in Syria. I sure would like to find out though.
My mother sent another letter to the First Lady - President Al-Assad's wife. She responded to our first two letters and we're hopeful that this keeps up awareness of the search for Nicole.
Google Alerts sends me an email whenever it links to a new page mentioning Nicole. A few weeks ago it found this "Forensic Astrology" page. It's unusual in that a lot of effort has apparently gone into the page, but we've heard nothing (that I'm aware of) from the author. It's entertaining, but unfortunately does not quite fit the facts as we know them.
My brother came home for the long weekend and seems to be doing okay despite eating only soft foods. The scar on his jaw isn't noticeable and the second scar is inside his mouth. We'll have to see what kind of long term effects the injury will have.
September 27th (Evening):
A 17-year old girl, Mariam Makhniashvili, has gone missing right here in Toronto, roughly in my neighbourhood. Apparently while just outside her school she disappeared. No leads at all, police are perplexed. Case is complicated by the family history - she moved here from Russia just three months ago where she'd been living with her grandparents while her parents worked in Los Angeles. Last person to see her was her brother who says that he went in the back of the school while she went in the front.
I have lots of theories on what could have happened - years of developing theories about Nicole expands the mind that way. You have to look closely at the family and the last person who saw her. You also have to check people she knew back in Russia - did she just runaway to be back with her friends or a boyfriend? She's also new to the country and possibly easy to mislead. Was she abducted by someone?
This leads me to a book I'm currently reading as part of the search for Nicole - The Natashas: Inside The New Global Sex Trade by Victor Malarek, a Canadian author. It was written in 2003 and details some chilling stories about women from Russia being lured to other countries (often by other women, some of whom are trying to buy their own freedom) and sold into sexual slavery from which they have a lot of trouble escaping. I've read a lot of books on crime recently and they all end up leaving me very depressed about corruption and violence in the world.
We continue to hope that Nicole has not been captured and sent somewhere as a sex slave, the details of which I'll avoid mentioning (needless to say, it is likely much worse than you're thinking). It is the one viable scenario that has her still alive, but I just can't imagine this much time would have passed without any clues or contact - Nicole is canny and a fighter, she would find a way (the book describes women who borrow cell phones from "johns" to call home and tell people where they are).
Syria is a source of women for sex trafficking - commonly Iraqi refugees with few options. We continue to hope/believe that no one would be brazen enough to grab a foreign tourist. That being said, we have some evidence that leads us to consider the option. The hotel clerk that last saw Nicole left the Cairo Hotel soon after Nicole disappeared and started a business, supposedly with money recently given to him by a woman he knew. The nature of their relationship, and the identity of the woman, is a mystery to us. One would think the police would follow this lead as much as possible, but they do not appear to be getting too far with it. Our hope that the police/officials investigating Nicole's disappearance are not also corrupt is being tested.
In Mexico, 60-year old Canadian woman Renee Wathelet was murdered in her condo a week or two ago. This is the latest in a series of murdered Canadians in Mexico. Travelling does have risks, and life in general can be dangerous once in a while, no matter where you are. We have the unusual situation of Syria, but it would be no less devastating if Nicole had made it back and then disappeared or been murdered in her home.
One of Nicole's friends has taken a great interest in her disappearance appears to be working tirelessly to help find her. He read through the entire blog (which is quite lengthy at this point) trying to pull together information. Due to his work we've realized that Nicole's journals indicate she "socialized in the foyer" on the 29th, but the Americans she talked to that we've subsequently found and spoken with, talked to her on the 30th (as confirmed in the hotel guest register). That leaves us with people who would have spoken with Nicole (the "socializing") but whom we either haven't found, or haven't mentioned it to us. We found most of the guests, so this is very surprising. But it could be nothing - it is easy to forget idle chatter with a random person at a hostel, especially months or years later.
Again, these are the details you'd expect the police to be on top of, but it seems like we have to remind them that her journals even exist (which we translated to Arabic) sometimes. And such a difference proximity makes - the missing Russian girl here in Toronto has dozens of officers and helicopters and dogs out searching random parks in hopes of finding evidence. Meanwhile we have no RCMP presence on the ground (or desire to change that) and the Syrian police didn't investigate until a month after she was reported missing.
We're still working out how best to approach the Canadian government for more direct assistance and diplomatic support in convincing the Syrians to push a bit harder. The chance of an election has diminished recently, which at least reduces the distractions for politicians should we need their attention.
( Click Here For Additional/Older Details... )
Current Mood:  worried
Current Music: Gerard McMann - "Cry Little Sister"
Tags: jacqueline nicole vienneau missing syria
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vienneau's journal