RABAT - Former Olympic athletics champion Khalid Skah is to seek an Islamic ruling or fatwa to get back his children who he says were kidnapped by the Norwegian government on behalf of his ex-wife.
As well as seeking the fatwa, Skah, the 10,000 metres champion at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, also said in an interview on Wednesday that "I decided to give 500,000 dollars to whoever brings back my children to Morocco."
"I will ask the ulemas (scholars) of the Muslim-Arab world to issue a fatwa on the best way of getting back my two children: Selma, born in 1993 and Tarik, born in 1996," he said.
Khalid Skah's former wife, Anne Cecilie Hopstock, a Norwegian, is the mother of the children. She left her husband in 2007 and had been demanding custody of the children who are now in Norway.
Skah's supporters say the children were abducted on July 19 by Norway's ambassador in Rabat Bjorn Olav Blokhus. The Norwegian government has denied any involvement in the events surrounding the children.
Skah has said that Moroccan authorities had proof of the Norwegian embassy's involvement in the disappearance of his children, who have dual Moroccan-Norwegian citizenship.
According to Skah, Tarik and Selma had lived in Rabat since 2006 and their mother left the north African country the following year to return to Norway.
She has since filed charges against her former husband for kidnapping, violence and threats.
"Contrary to what my wife said, neither she, nor my two children, were living cloistered in Rabat," Skah said.
Norwegian media reports said Hopstock left Morocco because she was forced to stay at home all the time.
He also denied that his wife had "fled" Morocco, saying that "My wife left Morocco voluntarily as I paid for her plane ticket myself with my credit card."
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