A Miami man has been handed a 16-month prison term for spiriting away his two young children to foreign lands, in a bitter fallout that saw him defy court orders and the frantic search of the children's mother to find them. Hamilton Alexander Merilus, also known as Salahudin Sabah Alexander Amhadulla-Merilus, was convicted of whisking his kids off to Morocco and Turkey, following a domestic squabble that led his wife to seek a divorce while she was in the Dominican Republic, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida.

The deceit began back in 2019; Merilus laid false claims before a judge—asserting the children's mother had abandoned them and her whereabouts were unknown to him—this falsehood granted him full custody of the two, then just babes of two and four, the prosecution laid out. As the custodial drama played out, the mother was told in a chilling audio message that she'd never again lay eyes on her progeny, with Merilus vowing to become a ghost with her children in tow.

When the mother returned stateside, she was met with silence and absence, the whereabouts of Merilus and the kids a troubling mystery but once she found out about the fraudulent custody, she immediately took legal action securing joint and eventually full custody, which Merilus completely disregarded. The father's odyssey with the children reached as far as Morocco and once authorities closed in with a wellness check in July 2023 he uprooted once more, this time for Turkish shores, all the while leaving his kids behind on several jaunts back to the U.S., where he concocted stories of their location, on one occasion he even claimed they were staying with the children's grandmother in Florida.

The years-long ordeal culminated with an arrest in Arizona on August 9, 2023, by that time the children had been separated from their mother for more than four precarious years—their eventual reunion happened on Turkish soil on October 5, 2023. U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe and the FBI's Special Agent in Charge Jeffrey B. Veltri spearheaded the investigation, the latter bringing the long arm of law enforcement to cradle the children back to safety;

The case was part of the wider Project Safe Childhood initiative, a concerted Department of Justice effort commenced in 2006 aiming to tackle child exploitation and rescue victims, with more details available on the department's online portal. Documents pertinent to this case, which drew upon the combined efforts of federal, state and local law enforcement, can be reviewed at the Southern District of Florida's court website or through the federal court documents system.