Syria - Jacqueline Vienneau, 33, Hama, 31 March 2007 - Canadian

jodierenee

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http://www.findnicolevienneau.com/

http://vienneau.livejournal.com/39588.html

SUMMARY

My sister, Nicole Vienneau, a 33-year old Canadian tourist, has been missing in Syria since March 31st (337 days). She was last seen by the desk clerk as she left the Cairo Hotel in Hama. She intended to return as her backpack was left in her room with her camera memory chips. Nicole had recently been asking other guests and hotel staff about how to get to the "Beehive Houses", a local sightseeing destination, as well as Qasr Ibn Wardan (a nearby castle). No one at these locations recalls seeing Nicole (and they are not heavily visited). Nicole preferred taking local transit, but none of the minibus drivers remembers her either. The streets from the hotel to the minibus pick-up are main streets with lots of people, even at 8:30 in the morning.

In May, I flew to Syria with Nicole's fiancé Gary to re-trace her steps and meet with police and local officials. Gary spent an additional two months criss-crossing Syria searching for clues, and is planning to return. My mother visited Syria in July and met with the Grand Mufti as well as the Minister of the Interior. She also made a personal plea on Syrian television and we have put ads in the newspapers and local flyers.

There is up to 1,000,000 Syrian pounds ($20,000) in reward money for information leading us to Nicole.

We are currently looking for other guests at the Cairo Hotel in case they spoke with Nicole.

WE ARE CURRENTLY VERY INTERESTED IN FINDING AMIN BEN YAHIA, BORN IN 1984, FATHER'S NAME IS ABBAS, MOTHER'S NAME IS MONICA, NATIONALITY - ALGERIAN (Mother may be Swiss). Amin visited Qasr Ibn Wardan on the day Nicole disappeared and we'd love to ask if he saw or remembers anything unusual about that day.

There is a selection of hotel guest lists further down the page - please contact us if you know anyone on these lists.

For pictures of Nicole, as well as relevant personal information and summaries of the search so far, please visit:

http://www.findnicolevienneau.com/
 
Thank you for starting this thread jodierenee. I hope Nicole's family get some answers soon. It's coming up to one year since she went missing. My heart just breaks for her family.

image005.jpg


Missing Canadian in Syria, Jacqueline Nicole Vienneau, 33
 
No updates since last year either...I wonder what's going on.
 
Yet another missing person that seemed to get very little media attention. What a nightmare for her family and fiance.
 
I think we must be looking at different things. I check his page at least every week and this was definitely the most recent post that he made on April 14 2008. There is a March 31 entry below it that talks about how Nicole has been missing for a year.

April 14th (Evening):

Every morning when I wake up there are a few emails from my parents in Syria, keeping me updating on what they're doing without going into too many details, and often asking for information from emails we've received in the past year. They were interviewed by Tishreen (major Syrian newspaper) yesterday and today there are television crews there doing interviews. As I said on the weekend, this kind of exposure is exactly what we're looking for. On Tuesday they will visit Hama and possibly Apamea and Palmyra. Nicole visited Apamea the day before she disappeared and people remember seeing her there because she liked it so much she stayed and read for a few hours, which the warders found unusual. Palmyra warrants more investigation given the missing two days that Nicole spent where no hotel has a record of it. It's also possible that her lengthy stay in Palmyra (4 days) drew unpleasant attention to her in some way that led to her disappearance.

Speaking of unpleasant, I watched the movie
"Trade" on the weekend and it painted a very uncomfortable picture of sex trafficking and how easy it is to grab someone and make them disappear. The plot involves a teenager trying to find his missing sister after she was taken by sex slavers. I haven't concentrated on this scenario because Western foreigners are almost never the target of sex trafficking, and it makes our search nearly impossible if an organized ring is involved (potentially Russian). My mother worries about it much more - I certainly don't think she needs or wants to see this movie.

I received an email this week about the "tunnels" underneath Hama. Others have mentioned them before, but officials in Syria didn't seem to think much of the idea. Does anyone have concrete information about tunnels in Hama? They may relate to the events in the 1980s, which makes it awkward for some to talk about.
 
And right above all that, next to his picture, it says this:
Vienneau (vienneau) wrote,
[SIZE=-1]@ 2007-04-22 10:59:00[/SIZE]

And if you click on the LJ link (with the icon of a person next to it) it takes you to the last entry, April 22, 2007. All that is posted on the link is inside his journal, chronologically.
 
And right above all that, next to his picture, it says this:
Vienneau (vienneau) wrote,
[SIZE=-1]@ 2007-04-22 10:59:00[/SIZE]

And if you click on the LJ link (with the icon of a person next to it) it takes you to the last entry, April 22, 2007. All that is posted on the link is inside his journal, chronologically.

I see what you mean now. It looks like he just updates the main page, rather then his actual journal. You can start just after Nicole went missing and read up until April 14 this year. You don't need to click on anything to see the most recent updates, just scroll down the page.
 
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1019933
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=+1]Re: Nicole Poster - IRC[/SIZE][/FONT]
vienneau
[SIZE=-1]2008-03-29 11:49 am UTC[/SIZE] [SIZE=-1](link)[/SIZE] We accessed Nicole's email account last summer via the RCMP and our own contacts with Microsoft. That's how we know when she attempted to login but failed (on the 30th). We've also checked for any suspicious emails and found nothing.

My mother could apply for power of attorney for Nicole here, but you need to wait a year for the state to declare her "dead" (if I remember correctly) and we haven't had a serious need for the additional legal authority as of yet. [SIZE=-2](Reply to this)(Parent)[/SIZE]

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[FONT=Arial,Helvetica][SIZE=+1]Thank you[/SIZE][/FONT]
(Anonymous)
[SIZE=-1]2008-04-12 05:53 pm UTC[/SIZE] [SIZE=-1](link)[/SIZE] Just read your last few updates marking the recent milestones and, as always, my heart goes out to you. What a difficult time.

I thank you for sharing your wonderful memories of when you were last with Nicole, and I cried. They are such special memories and I wish you could hold onto them with no pain. But hold onto them nonetheless.

Great to read about the latest efforts being made, and your spirits on the up and up.

Roberta

http://vienneau.livejournal.com/39588.html?page=16#comments
 
Below is the lastest post on Nicole's brother, Matt's website, and I am not sure what it means:

(Anonymous)
[SIZE=-1]2008-06-08 02:30 am UTC[/SIZE] [SIZE=-1](link)[/SIZE] Matt,
I am sorry sad to hear about what the last couple of weeks must have been like for your family..and yes I can understand feeling relief if the news was finding your sisters body. People need closure. Positive closure is what we pray for but even negative closure is a blessing of sorts.

I agree that the skills that you have picked up here would be very beneficial to an employer. I will think about this for the next day or so and will post any thing that I come up with about how to phrase this correctly.
http://vienneau.livejournal.com/39588.html
 
From the above link:
June 7th (Evening):

The dessicated body found several weeks ago beside the Orontes river in Syria is not Nicole's.

That is the new development that has turned out, after several tense weeks, to be un-related to our situation. We were informed a few weeks ago that an unidentified female skeleton of approximately the right age, that appeared to have died approximately one year ago, had been discovered near a village in the Hama region. The skeleton was missing both feet, the right shoulder and arm, the left form (?) and the neck. The skeleton was wearing a full woollen dress and head scarf, and the body was bound up in elastic cord. It seems possible that the body was weighted down in the river until the tissue deteriorated sufficiently that the ankles snapped and the body floated free and got caught at a sharp turn in the river. As details slowly emerged while we thought this was Nicole, some horrible scenarios went through our minds.

There is more at the link:
http://vienneau.livejournal.com/39588.html
 
Thank you, Woofie. I see more recent posts have been posted in the past few days. Keeping Nicole and her family in my thoughts and prayers for guidance and a safe return home, soon.

ariel

but253f17236619_myspace.gif
 
June 21st (Noon):

I received the following email from my stepfather on Monday:

"seeing donations to the trust today all of a sudden !!- then I checked your blog for yesterday ....."

While I haven't yet checked the numbers myself, based on comments I've received, it sounds like people are once again being generous and assisting us. The family is exceptionally grateful to all the people that have helped in countless different ways this past year and a bit. I continue to be surprised by the emails I receive - it seems like quite a few are from other provinces or countries or continents. I just wish I had some news for people!

I've begun encountering a new situation recently - people who have entered my life but don't know anything about Nicole. After a year of everyone knowing about it, it's always unexpected when I realize someone isn't aware. It has led to one or two confusing situations where I've assumed they knew what I was talking about. It also leads to more situations where I have to explain the whole search and so on, but that's still rare enough that's it not too much of an issue. The hardest part for me is watching people struggle to figure out what to say. I want to assure them that I have a thick skin so they're very unlikely to offend me, and I've had hundreds of people speak to me about it, so I know what they're going through. For people who aren't expecting to hear it, it's not surprising that the right words are difficult to find. Heck, I still don't know what the perfect response is to someone who says, "my sister/daughter/partner has been missing in Syria for a year" so I suspect there isn't one to find.

Not much real news to report this week. The Canadian Embassy in Syria continues to assure us that the Syrians are investigating what needs to be investigated, with a renewed vigour since Mom's visit back in April. Mom has accepted that she may need to return a third time as her presence seems to be a significant motivator, but they are hard trips, especially in the hot summer months.

http://vienneau.livejournal.com/39588.html?thread=434084#t434084
 

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