Via FAX: (202) 458-3992

Dear Dr. Marquez:

We wish to file a complaint under the American Convention on Human Rights against the Government of the United States of America regarding the kidnapping of six infant children plus my 80-year-old mother by the United States Government.

The kidnappers of the children are not connected in any way with relatives of the children. Rather, they are assisting members of a fanatical religious group, who want to convert the children to Christianity. My mother was kidnapped to get her money.

To be brief, my mother, Dr. Helen Marjorie Sloan, a retired child psychiatrist, was kidnapped on September 3, 1990 out of her hospital bed where she was extremely ill in the Bangkok General Hospital, through the efforts Stephen R. Pattison, a United States Consular officer. My mother was then transported against her will from Thailand to the United States. The sum of $27,000 was paid to a professional kidnapper named Boonchoo to facilitate this kidnapping. For the four years prior to that kidnapping, my mother had been living as a fugitive and a refugee in foreign countries, because of the efforts of persons living in the United States to imprison her and to extort money out of her. Ever since her kidnapping, my mother, who is now 82, has been held as an incarcerated prisoner in Aiken, South Carolina. They intend to keep her locked up there for the remainder of her life.

At the time that my mother was being kidnapped, the same consular officer was also attempting to kidnap my three children, ages 8, 2 and 2. I managed to escape with the three children from Thailand, only to be apprehended in the United Arab Emirates one month later.

On October 6, 1990, I spent one and a half hours in the United States Embassy in Abu Dhabi, talking to Ronald Simkin, the consular officer on duty there, complaining about the fact that we were on the run because an effort was being made by the embassy to kidnap my children. The very next day, on October 7, 1990, while I was taking a nap, my three children were kidnapped from the front yard of my house in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates. One child, a little boy, Michael Rankoth Sloan, aged 2, was abandoned the next day in Abu Dhabi, because he was a boy (they only want girls) and was too difficult to manage. The other two children, Shamema Honzagool and Jessica Vithanage, were taken to America, where they were brought to the home of Charles Roberts, who had paid twelve thousand dollars for these kidnappings, on the morning of October 9, 1990.

Charles Roberts, a complete non-relative, is still holding Shamema Honzagool, now aged 10, to this day. An Interpol warrant is outstanding for the arrest of Charles Roberts in connection with these kidnappings, but he has not been arrested, because there is no extradition treaty with the United Arab Emirates.

One month later, on November 15, 1990, three other unrelated children, Sarah, Rebecca and Bethany, ages 8, 7, and 6, were kidnapped by the same religious group that had kidnapped my children and were also taken to Amherst County, Virginia. These three little girls were kidnapped from their mother off of a public Greyhound Bus in Roanoke, Virginia. Their mother had been in the process of taking the children to their grandmother's house by bus. These children are still being held in Amherst County, Virginia, the same place where my daughter, Shamema Honzagool, is also still being held.

All six of these children are alike in two respects. All of these children are extremely bright, and the kidnappers want them for that reason. Secondly, all of these children have international origins. The mother of my daughter, Shamema, is named Honzagool. Honzagool resides in a remote village in Chitral in Northwest Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan. Her great-uncle is Prince Mohay-ud-Din, who is the current Minister of State in the Government of Pakistan. My other kidnapped children, Michael Rankoth Sloan and Jessica Vithanage Sloan, have a mother from Kandy and Kalutara, Sri Lanka.

The three other kidnapped children, Sarah, Rebecca and Bethany, have a father from Bolivia. Their grandfather is Juan Carlos Camacho-Romero, who is the District Attorney of Santa Cruz, Bolivia and is a well known public figure in that country.

These kidnappers are able to get away with these kidnappings, because the natural parents of these children are too far removed to be able to fight to get their children back. Also, the judge in Amherst County, Virginia is a corrupt and crooked judge named Lawrence Janow. Judge Janow is clearly in league with the kidnappers and actually participated in and approved of these kidnappings. Needless to say, having involved himself in the kidnappings of these children, he has refused to disqualify himself as a judge and he will not allow any other judge to interfere in these cases.

I note that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has heard the similar cases of Velasquez and Godinez Cruz against the Government of Honduras. Those cases resulted in the award of a judgment in the amount of 1.4 million lempiras (equivalent to the amount $280,000 U.S. dollars at that time) against the Government of Honduras in favor of the families of those disappeared persons. The American Bar Association, at a meeting last week in San Francisco which I attended, has just passed an approving resolution regarding those cases.

In our case, however, the kidnapped children have not entirely disappeared. Rather, they are being held prisoners through a governmental entity. The natural parents of the children who are still being held are not allowed to have contact with the children or even to know where they are. These children have been held by a religious organization or cult in Amherst County, Virginia, of which Judge Janow is apparently a member or a sympathizer. The kidnappers intend to adopt these kidnapped children as their own.

Please don't say that we should contact the police and the FBI. We have been doing that ad infinitum for the past two years. We both have all kinds of state and federal lawsuits pending to recover our kidnapped children, but to no effect, because the local judge in Virginia is crooked.

Your agency and your court clearly have jurisdiction over a case such as this. I believe that if an award of $280,000 is a suitable judgment in the case against the Government of Honduras, then the Government of the United States should be ordered to pay at least $5,000,000 to each of the parents of the kidnapped children involved, plus obtain recovery of the kidnapped children and my kidnapped mother.

The following are the addresses of the parents of the children involved:

Louis Camacho
637 Marlin Court
Redwood City, CA 94065
(415) 921-6264

Claudia Wilson
406 N. Loudoun St. #2
Winchester, VA 22601
(703) 667-1885

Honzagool
c/o Zar Khan
Village Damik
P.O. Jinjoret
Chitral, Pakistan

Shanti Vithanage
21159 Ashfield Ave.
Castro Valley, Cal. 94546
(510) 888-1337

Ismail Sloan
2420 Atherton St. #6
Berkeley, CA 94704
(415) 922-4993

Louis Camacho and Claudia Wilson are the father and the mother of the three little kidnapped girls: Sarah, Rebecca and Bethany. Honzagool is the mother of Shamema Honzagool Sloan. Shanti Vithanage is the mother of Jessica Vithanage Sloan.

I hope that your court will give our cases expedited treatment, because we desperately need to get our kidnapped children back. We also request that you contact the United States Department of State immediately and the respective foreign embassies of the subject children, namely the embassies of Bolivia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, plus the embassies of Thailand and the United Arab Emirates where certain of the kidnappings took place, and that you initiate negotiations with the United States Government regarding the speedy recovery of the kidnapped children and the speedy return of the children to their parents.

Very Truly Yours,

M. Ismail Sloan

Copy to: Louis Camacho, Claudia Wilson, Shanti Vithanage and Honzagool