Canadian authorities were scrambling Friday to repatriate the body of a Canadian citizen who died in March during a trip to Cuba and was mistakenly buried in Russia, according to AFP.
Melanie Joly, with Justin Trudeau Photo: Profimedia Images
A government source, who is not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, told AFP it was difficult to determine what happened to Faraj Allah Jarjour’s body.
Jarjour was with his family in Varadero, 150 km east of Havana. The father of the family was swimming when he suffered a heart attack, according to Canadian media.
Once back in Canada, the family, who live in the suburbs of Montreal, received another body, that of a Russian citizen.
Funeral directors discovered that the man in the coffin was nothing like the man in the photo provided by the family.
The man, as reported by the Canadian media CBC, had hair, tattoos and looked 20 years younger than the citizen of Quebec.
Jarjour, who arrived in Canada in 2016 after fleeing the war in Syria, was bald and 68 years old.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, who spoke with his Canadian counterpart Mélanie Joly, said Cuban authorities are conducting an investigation to clarify what happened.
Minister Rodriguez apologized to the family for this mistake, lamenting the “unfortunate incident”.
“We are extremely concerned about the unimaginable situation his family is in,” Canadian Minister Mélanie Joly said.
“They will exhume him and send him to Canada,” Miriam Jarjour, the deceased’s daughter, told the CBC. “It’s not a good situation, but we have no choice. It does not depend on us, we can only be patient”.
Cuban authorities are also involved in repatriating the body.
Tags: confused dead body Canadian died Cuba mistakenly buried Russia
