Father charged with kidnapping son returned to U.S. from tiny Niue

[November 05, 2014]  (Reuters) - A father accused of kidnapping his son and taking him on a sailboat from Washington state to a tiny South Pacific island country has been returned to the United States, a law enforcement official said on Tuesday.

Jeffrey Ford Hanson was charged with international parental kidnapping and appeared in a Los Angeles court on Monday after he was taken into custody in Niue, one of the world's smallest countries, said Emily Langlie a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Hanson is set to be transported to Washington state to appear in federal court, Langlie said, although the date was not immediately clear.

The child, Billy Hanson, was visiting his father in Seattle in September and had been due to return home to his mother's house in Pennsylvania. He never boarded his flight, according to a Washington state missing person's report.

A federal arrest warrant was issued on Sept. 12, charging Hanson with kidnapping, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation contacted international authorities.

Authorities believed that Hanson had taken his son into the South Pacific on his 1976 White Cooper sailboat, before the pair was discovered in the island country of Niue some 5,000 miles (8,050 km) from the U.S. mainland.

(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Paul Tait)

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