Meriam Jarjour says she’s shocked, exhausted and devastated. Several weeks after her father died of a heart attack while swimming at a beach on vacation in Cuba, his body was supposed to have been repatriated by a Cuban government agency.
But when the funeral home brought the casket to a lab to have Faraj Allah Jarjour prepared for his funeral, the person inside looked nothing like the picture the family provided.
Instead, the body in front of them had a full head of hair, tattoos and looked 20 years younger. It was not Faraj Jarjour, who was born in 1956.
“I’ve been doing everything I can to get an answer. All I want to know is: where is he?” his daughter Meriam Jarjour said on Radio-Canada’s Tout un matin Monday morning.
Canadian consular services had brokered the body’s repatriation from Cuba to Canada at the cost of $10,000. But when Jarjour called the consulate asking what happened, she was told it was the fault and responsibility of the Cuban agency known as Asistur. CBC News reached out to Asistur, but has not yet received a response.
“Up until now, we have no response about where my father is,” said Jarjour, who is the emergency contact listed on her father’s passport and was the one to fill out the necessary forms to have her father’s body sent back home to Montreal.
It’s also still unclear whose body was sent to Quebec in her father’s place.Â
And Jarjour says the family’s troubles didn’t even start with the switch-up.Â
After Faraj Jarjour died in Varadero, Cuba, on March 22 as the family was vacationing together, his loved ones’ shock turned to horror when it took eight hours before emergency services arrived to collect his body from the resort town popular with Canadians.
In response to a request for comment from CBC News, Global Affairs Canada said it was “aware of the death of a Canadian citizen in Cuba. Our thoughts are with the friends and family of the deceased in these difficult circumstances.”
The emailed statement said consular officials were in contact with Cuban authorities and the family to provide assistance, but that “due to privacy considerations, no further information may be disclosed.”
