Mum's happiness as daughter comes home 34 years after she was kidnapped

When her three young girls were abducted by their father and taken abroad, Jackie Saleh was certain she would never see them again.

“My world fell apart,” she says. “I felt I’d failed. They were cruelly snatched away from me. That should never, ever happen. A mother should never have to go through that.”

The girls – Rahanna, Nadia and Safia – were aged five, four, and 18 months.

Jackie herself was just 23. She recalls: “All the emotions were going through my head, thinking I would never see those girls again. I was screaming, shouting, crying.”

Her daughters were taken by their father Sadek to Saudi Arabia and then to his homeland, war-torn Yemen.

But Jackie, now 57, never gave up hope – and last year her dream of rebuilding her family started to finally come true.

Youngest daughter Safia returned home to Cardiff, 33 years after being taken.

With her came her husband – and four of Jackie’s grandchildren.

The family’s remarkable story features in a BBC documentary, Kidnapped by My Father.

Jackie says: “I always knew one day this would happen. Now I have four grandchildren and a chance to get back what I lost.

“I wish we’d never been apart, I wish I could take away what she’s been through. I wish I could give her back her childhood.

“But here, they can go to the park, go outside – they have freedom. There’s no war, no struggle of not having food.”

Jackie met Yemeni expat Sadek on a night out in Cardiff when he was 28 and she just 15. After a whirlwind romance, she quickly accepted when he proposed.

Sadek insisted she converted to Islam before they wed. She says: “I didn’t tell my parents – my mum wasn’t happy. We married in a mosque in London.”

Sadek wanted them to live in Saudi Arabia but Jackie resisted, and all three girls were born in the UK.

She recalls: “Safia had loads of curly hair, she was a beautiful baby. We had an amazing bond. Nadia was so cute and sweet, Rahannah was the same.

“Sadek acted like he wanted them with him but I don’t think he was very loving towards them.

"He’d have liked a son – he viewed women as something to scrape off your shoe.”

The marriage soon became violent as Sadek tried to control his wife and three girls. Jackie was not allowed out and was made to cover up.

She recalls: “He’d slap me now and then. He threw a table at me once and cut my head open and I broke my arm.

“Hot tongs on my arm, cigarette burns – he was a monster. I felt I wanted to run away and escape and take the girls but I had nowhere to go.” 

One morning in 1986 Sadek told Jackie he was taking the girls to stay with his parents for the weekend. When they did not return on the Sunday, Jackie knew something was wrong.

She says: “I started to panic. The police interrogated me, came to the house, lifted the floorboards.

“They later told me Interpol had traced him to Heathrow airport. It was too late.” As the UK had no extradition treaty with Saudi Arabia, Jackie was told nothing more could be done.

For the next 15 years she struggled on, a day at a time, able to think only about where her girls were.

She says it was only her daughter Lucy, born two years later, who got her through the dark times.

Then in 2001 a letter arrived, written in Arabic. It was from her eldest daughter, Rahannah.

Jackie says: “I cried tears of joy, I was so overwhelmed. I couldn’t believe my daughter remembered me and had written to me. The girls were okay.”

At once she organised a trip to Yemen with a friend, journalist Val Bodden. At the airport, she was reunited with Rahannah and Nadia.

Jackie recalls: “The girls were waiting outside for me. I couldn’t see their faces, they were covered over. There was a lot of crying and hugging.

“I was so emotional, I was shaking. I couldn’t believe these two young girls were my daughters. The last time I saw them they were five and four.”

But there was someone missing – youngest daughter, Safia. Aged 15, she was still living under her father’s control.

A secret meeting was arranged at her school, where Jackie told Safia how she had been taken from her.

Jackie reveals: “At first she didn’t understand – she always thought Sadek’s new wife was her mother. I said, ‘No, I’m your mum’.

“I showed her the birth certificate and photos of her as a baby. Then she was just hugging me. I wanted to take her home, but I couldn’t. She broke down in tears because she knew I was her mum. It was the most incredible moment.

“She said, ‘Don’t leave me here’. She was clinging to my legs and saying ‘Take me with you, take me with you.’ It was heartbreaking.”

Jackie returned to Cardiff after 10 days and Rahannah and Nadia visited her later for a holiday. It was the last time she saw them.

Nadia died in 2007, aged 28, during labour with her fourth child.

She was haemorrhaging but the hospital in Yemen had no blood for her.

Jackie says: “She should still be alive now. I didn’t even get to say goodbye. I think of her every day.”

The same year, Sadek died in a car crash and Safia was finally free to live her own life.

She fell in love, married, and had four children. In 2018 Jackie decided to launch a campaign to bring her daughter home to Wales – and succeeded.

Safia, now 35, her husband Labeb and their children Mohammed, 14, Jacqueline, 13, Lucy, 10, and Asalah, four, arrived in January 2019 and now live close to Jackie in Cardiff.

Jackie says: “I felt I was in a dream, I wake in the morning and reality sinks in that she’s home.

“I can give her a kiss and a hug, see her whenever I want.”

Safia’s favourite thing is to go shopping on Cardiff’s high street, while the kids enjoy going to school and the simple freedom of playing in the park.

In Yemen, they lived crammed together in one tiny room.

Jackie hopes one day Rahannah and her family will join her younger sister too, but for now she is elated to finally have her baby home.

She says: “It’s a dream. I never gave up fighting for my children.”