Danish embassy was involved in 'child trafficking' of adoptees from Lebanon

A senior employee at the Danish embassy informed an adoption agency, among other things, about bribery, experts estimate.

The Danish embassy in Lebanon and the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs were involved in controversial adoptions in the 1980s, where Lebanese children came to Denmark.

This is the assessment of several experts after reading correspondence between a Danish adoption agency and several high-ranking employees at the embassy.

DR was able to reveal yesterday that the adoption agency AC Børnehjælp has in some cases used bribes to get adoptions from Lebanon through - including through donations. In other cases, according to experts, the children were directly trafficked.

And now it turns out that the embassy and thus the Danish state were involved. A revelation that has come to light in the new DR podcast series 'Falske minder'.

 

There is much evidence that the state has actively participated in and helped to forge documents.Marya Akhtar

The embassy in the Lebanese capital Beirut helped AC Children's Aid, among others, get donations into the country duty-free, documents show.

A senior embassy official also wrote to the agency, describing how religious courts could be paid to forge documents to facilitate adoptions.

The information is startling, says Klaus Josefsen, who is a lawyer, external associate professor specializing in administrative law at Aarhus University and has followed the adoption field closely.

He assesses that the Danish state has "been very actively involved" in the controversial adoptions.

- This is the first time we've seen it, says Klaus Josefsen.

Who are the experts?

Several experts believe that the way AC Børnehjælp facilitated adoptions from Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s can be characterized as child trafficking or bribery.

The experts are:

Klaus Josefsen, external associate professor at Aarhus University and expert in administrative law.

Caroline Adolphsen, professor of children's law who has researched adoption, Aarhus University.

Stine Jørgensen, professor of social law who has researched international adoption, University of Copenhagen.

New capital for Danish adoption history

In recent years, the media has been flooded with stories about questionable adoptions from abroad to Denmark.

Among other things, DR has revealed how adoptees from South Korea and India have come to Denmark with false papers and false stories - in some cases with the knowledge of Danish adoption agencies.

Read also : Adoption scandal grows: More children have been tricked from their biological parents and sent to Denmark

But the new information about the role of Danish authorities in adoptions from Lebanon adds a whole new chapter to Danish adoption history, Marya Akhtar believes.

She is the legal director at the Danish Institute for Human Rights and has also seen the documents about the adoptions from Lebanon.

- So far, we have come across many cases where one could speak of a lack of supervision from the state.

"In these cases, it's not just about keeping an eye on others. There is much evidence that the state has actively participated," she says.

Folmer Lund Nielsen was the director of the Danish adoption agency AC Børnehjælp.

Contribution to the church fund

Marya Akhtar focuses particularly on an exchange of letters between the then Danish vice-consul in Lebanon, Jens Holch, and AC Børnehjælp in 1980.

The adoption agency had encountered a challenge. The Protestant court in Beirut would not carry out adoptions of children who were not Protestant. The director of the Danish adoption agency, Folmer Lund Nielsen, wrote to the vice-consul at the time.

In response, Jens Holch wrote to the adoption agency that some religious bodies would agree to change children's religion and that formal requirements could be circumvented by payment.

"For your own confidential information, I can mention that the question of "the correct faith" in this society can often be "arranged". (...) An appropriate contribution to the church treasury is also said to be able to mitigate strict, formal requirements," wrote the vice-consul.

Changing a child's faith in this way could be a violation of human rights, Marya Akhtar believes.

"You should have access to find out where you come from, to the extent possible. In any case, it should not be the state that, with its interference, makes it impossible to find out what your background is," she says.

According to Klaus Josefsen, the procedure Jens Holch describes in the letter is bribery. This is because the payment would attempt to change a court's assessment.

- It is quite serious when a Danish official directly encourages bribery and to circumvent national rules in Lebanon by outright bribing.

The conditions are outdated today, but would have been punishable, Klaus Josefsen assesses in the video here:

Afspil video

42 sekunder

AC Børnehjælp used the method in Jens Holch's letter in the following years, DR's review of correspondence from that time shows. At the same time, AC Børnehjælp continued to maintain close contact with the embassy.

In a response to DR, Jens Holch writes today that his letter to AC Børnehjælp should be seen as information to the adoption agency that the practice of a donation being able to change a child's religion was "disturbing and critical". He also points out that he does not know how AC Børnehjælp reacted to the information.

A respirator 'as payment' for children

The letter from Jens Holch is not the only one linking the Danish Foreign Service to the controversial adoptions from Lebanon. The Foreign Service was again involved when AC Børnehjælp in 1984 wanted to provide a respirator for a hospital in the Lebanese city of Byblos "as payment" for children for adoption.

This is evident from correspondence between AC Børnehjælp's director, Folmer Lund Nielsen, and the adoption agency's liaison contact in Lebanon, Grete Buhr.

Sunday's BT visited Grete Buhr in Beirut, who told the newspaper how she picked up children in a small bullet-riddled Honda during the civil war in the 1980s. A total of 63 adoptees have come from Lebanon to Denmark - Grete Buhr arranged for 49 of them. Original photos and text: Erik Pedersen, BT

Grete Buhr was an intermediary in 49 adoptions from Denmark to Lebanon in the 1980s and married to the then vice consul at the Danish embassy in Beirut, Allan Sørensen - Jens Holch's successor.

It was an employee at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who, according to the correspondence between Grete Buhr and Folmer Lund Nielsen, obtained an offer for a children's respirator for the hospital.

The respirator could even be purchased VAT-free because it went through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, noted Grete Buhr. The employee at the ministry was also involved when the respirator was later to be delivered.

The respirator was to be used in what experts have assessed to be child trafficking. The experts conclude this based on exchanges between Folmer Lund Nielsen and Grete Buhr.

- We can donate it to (the hospital, ed.) as payment for the two (babies, ed.) we have had, and the one we will have shortly, Grete Buhr wrote to Folmer Lund Nielsen.

Klaus Josefsen believes that Grete Buhr is abusing the special privileges her husband had as an employee at the embassy.

- They are trying to use the special diplomatic rules to get goods around controls and customs. That is not the point of the special rules. That is abuse, he says.

It is not clear from the correspondence whether anyone at the embassy in Beirut or at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was aware that the respirator was to be used "as payment" for children.

Used embassy to avoid customs

Grete Buhr not only once used her husband's position in her work to obtain children for adoption in Denmark.

She did the same when, in the early 1980s, she wanted to import milk powder into Lebanon duty-free for an orphanage she worked with. At the time, her husband was serving as acting ambassador at the embassy in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

Grete Buhr wrote in a letter to Folmer Lund Nielsen in 1982 that milk powder was "the key to adopting children to Denmark".

- She solves the customs problem by letting her husband take the cargo home as the embassy's private. She can do that now that her husband is the head of the embassy in Damascus, it was said in a transcript of a telephone conversation between Grete Buhr and Folmer Lund Nielsen.

The vice consul himself, Allan Sørensen, also later wrote directly to AC Børnehjælp about how donations of milk powder to the orphanage could be practically made possible.

And this is criticized by external lecturer, Klaus Josefsen.

- It's a Danish official at a fairly high level who is contributing to this. It's serious.

'Other buyers are interested'

At the same time, a correspondence also links Allan Sørensen to AC Børnehjælp's writings about payment for children.

The deputy director of AC Børnehjælp wrote in a letter to Grete Buhr in 1983 that she distanced herself from Grete Buhr's remark that "other buyers are interested" in a child. A remark that Grete Buhr had previously written in a telex.

- As an authorized organization, we cannot participate in anything resembling the purchase of children and certainly not allow such, probably humorous, remarks from your side to be made public.

To this, Grete Buhr replied that:

- I am of course the first to regret the remark about buyers in connection with mediation, but unfortunately it was my dear husband who sent the aforementioned telex on my behalf and in my name, as I was not at home.

'Calling for scrutiny'

The overall picture raises many questions that should be examined further, says Marya Akhtar from the Danish Institute for Human Rights.

- It is striking how active the involvement has been.

- This calls for a very thorough investigation of the context in which these documents are part of and what else has happened, she says.

Stine Jørgensen, a professor of social law at the University of Copenhagen and a researcher into international adoption, shares the same assessment. She believes that the adoption agency and the Danish authorities have been too "interwoven".

- They have had a goal of getting as many children as possible, as easily as possible, to Denmark through the adoption system. So I also believe that it is necessary to look at how the Danish state has handled the international adoption systems in general, she says.

'Our mother acted out of care'

Grete Buhr died 18 years ago, and DR has therefore presented the criticism of her to her children. They call it "violent accusations".

- Accusing, she herself does not have the opportunity to defend or explain, the children write, emphasizing that their mother facilitated adoptions with good intentions.

- What we know is that our mother acted out of care for the children who were born during a violent wartime in the hope of giving these children a better future in Denmark, without war, destruction and death.

This is how we did it

In connection with the podcast series 'False Memories', DR Dokumentar has reviewed almost 1,000 pages of access to documents in AC Børnehjælp's archive from Lebanon in the 70s and 80s.

We have mapped the adoption cases and the parties involved.

We have reviewed the files on adoption that the National Archives has received from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of 43 countries.

We have presented relevant documentation to experts in administrative law, social and children's law, human rights and transnational adoption and involved parties.

In addition, we have interviewed a number of those adopted from Lebanon, their families, as well as a number of parties and witnesses in Lebanon.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs writes in an email to DR that it "takes all allegations of corruption and bribery extremely seriously and recognizes the seriousness - not least of allegations connected to the area of ​​adoption".

- The Ministry of Foreign Affairs cannot comment on individual cases, which in this case date back almost 40 years, it continues.

We have also attempted to present the criticism to the descendants of the director of AC Children's Aid, Folmer Lund Nielsen, but they have not returned our inquiry.

Behind the iron gate of a cemetery lies a secret that will change the history of many people. You can hear more about the cemetery, Grete Buhr, AC Børnehjælp and get the personal stories of the adoptees in the DR podcast series 'Falske minder'.