Wrong body returned from Cuba to Quebec family after father dies while on vacation

MONTREAL — A Montreal-area woman is asking Canadian authorities for help locating her father’s body in Cuba after a devastating mix-up in which her family received a stranger’s remains instead.

Funeral services for Miriam Jarjour’s father, Faraj Allah Jarjour, were scheduled to take place on Sunday and Monday. But instead of letting her father rest, Jarjour desperately calls and emails as many officials as possible in an attempt to find his body.

“So far we don’t have any answers,” she said in a telephone interview Monday. “Where is my father?”

Jarjour said she was swimming with her 68-year-old father in the ocean near Varadero, Cuba, on March 22 during a family vacation when he suddenly suffered a heart attack and died.

With no medical facilities available, his body was covered and left on a beach chair in the hot sun for more than eight hours until a car arrived to take it to Havana, Jarjour said.

After that it is not clear what happened.

Jarjour said she followed the Canadian consulate’s instructions and paid $10,000 to have the body returned to family in Laval, Que.

However, the coffin that arrived late last week contained the body of a Russian man who was at least 20 years younger than Jarjour’s father and, unlike him, had a full head of hair and tattoos.

Jarjour says the stranger’s body has been sent to his country, but she and her family are at a loss as to where her father is.

She said that when she contacted consular authorities, they blamed the company in Cuba that coordinated the return of the remains. She has since emailed other government officials, including her MP, Liberal Annie Koutrakis, who she said agreed to contact Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly.

“I’m honestly destroyed,” Jarjour said. ‘So far we have no answers. We are waiting. I don’t know what to tell you.’

Jarjour described her father as an active 68-year-old who did not smoke or drink. The Syrian-born family man was “always smiling,” she said.

The ordeal has left her mother exhausted, she said, as she and her brother struggle through their own grief while trying to get answers from authorities, all of whom appear to deny responsibility.

So far, the family has spent $25,000, including $15,000 for the funeral services that have been suspended.

In an email, Global Affairs Canada said consular officials are working with Cuban authorities and the family to resolve the issue. But Jarjour doesn’t feel like she’s getting the answers she needs and hopes Joly will personally intervene to put pressure on the Cuban authorities.

“What I want is for someone to help me find my father,” she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 22, 2024.

Morgan Lowrie, The Canadian Press