Body of Canadian dad missing after he dies in Cuba
By Nadine Yousif
A Canadian family is demanding answers from officials after they received the wrong body following the death of their father abroad.
Faraj Jarjour died from an apparent heart attack while on vacation with his family in Varadero, Cuba on 22 March.
One month later, his children say they have yet to receive Mr Jarjour’s body back for burial.
They say they were sent the body of a different man instead, and that their father’s remains are still missing.
“It’s a tragedy at their house,” Anas Fransis, a close friend of the Jarjour family, told the BBC in an interview.
The family, who live in Laval, Quebec, were on the beach at a resort in Varadero on their second day of vacation when their 68-year-old father suffered from an apparent cardiac arrest.
There was no doctor on the premises, Mr Fransis said, and the family had to wait an hour and a half until medical help arrived. They waited another seven hours for Mr Jarjour’s deceased body to be transferred to Havana, where the nearest morgue was located.
The family then contacted Canadian consular services in Cuba. Canadian officials advised them to travel immediately back to Canada, Mr Fransis said, and to get in touch with authorities there to arrange the transfer of Mr Jarjour’s body back home.
