The body of Faraj Allah Jarjour, the Quebecer who died in Cuba last March, was finally found Thursday in Russia, where he is buried. A meager victory, according to his bereaved daughter, for whom “it is not normal that he is in Russia”.
However, Faraj Allah Jarjour’s family does not know when his body will be repatriated. “He’s buried there, so it’s going to take a while to get the coffin out and back here,” explains the deceased’s daughter, Miriam.
Relatives of the 68-year-old Laval resident had spent $10,000 to have his body repatriated from Cuba, but it was instead the remains of a Russian citizen that had been sent to them. “We are trying to understand how this could have happened,” laments Miriam Jarjour.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba apologized and offered condolences to the family, through Global Affairs Canada. Cuba also reimbursed the sum of $10,000 to the deceased’s relatives.
A tragic vacation
It was on March 22, while on vacation in Cuba, that Faraj Allah Jarjour died of a heart attack while swimming in the sea with his daughter, Miriam. “I started shouting for everyone to come and help me,” she says.
Without medical assistance, the family laid the body of the sixty-year-old on the beach before his son, Karam, came to provide first aid. It was only 45 minutes later that a doctor came to help them. “When she arrived, she told me that he had died,” she adds.
For more than eight hours, until midnight, the father’s body remained lying on a deck chair, under the sun, before a vehicle came to take him to the hospital in Havana. The family would then have started the procedures to repatriate the body.
With Esther Dabert, special collaboration