“Like the Loss of a Child”: Mother Speaks Out as Ex-Husband Faces Trial for 11-Year Abduction
Irina Vencu sits at the very edge of the courtroom of the Zurich District Court. It is the greatest possible distance from the defendant’s bench. There sits the man who changed her life forever. He is her ex-husband. The father of her son, Josif Hector.
For eleven years, Vencu has been fighting to get Josif Hector back. In the summer of 2015, her ex-husband abducted him from Switzerland to Jordan.
It is a struggle that the 46-year-old had already believed she had lost. But everything changed last summer. On 1 June 2025, the Jordanian businessman was arrested at Frankfurt Airport. There was an international arrest warrant against him, issued on behalf of the Swiss authorities. After his arrest in Germany, he was extradited to Zurich.
On Wednesday, the 44-year-old sits in court. He does not deny that he took the couple’s son to his homeland. But he says: “I was afraid that he might no longer be part of my life. I only wanted to protect him.”
Irina Vencu follows his statement in disbelief.
A fateful decision
Irina Vencu and her ex-husband met in 2002 in the Jordanian capital, Amman. She is an architect from Romania; he comes from a wealthy Jordanian family and works as an IT developer.
In 2009, the couple married in Romania and several months later again in his homeland. He moved to Switzerland for a job; she followed a year later. Their son Josif Hector was born in 2012. The family lived in Zurich.
But the marriage did not develop well. She says he changed and became increasingly conservative. Later she would tell the authorities about verbal and physical violence. He, on the other hand, says he suffered from depression. In addition, he suspected his wife of having a lover.
On the day that changed her life, the couple were no longer living under the same roof. Protective marital proceedings were underway, and Irina Vencu had applied for sole custody.
She was worried that her husband might flee to Jordan with the child. But the authorities paid no attention to these concerns. The Zurich District Court saw no risk of abduction, according to a decision from mid-June 2015.
It would prove to be a fateful misjudgment.
A zoo visit as a pretext
On a Saturday morning in August 2015, the event Irina Vencu feared finally happened.
Little Josif Hector was not yet three years old. Two weeks earlier, he had traveled to Jordan with his father. On that summer morning, the two were supposedly going to Zurich Zoo. It had been agreed that father and son would return that evening, according to the public prosecutor’s indictment.
When her ex-husband arrived at the door to pick up the boy, everything appeared normal. Later she would recall that he was in a good mood and smiling.
When Vencu asked in the afternoon how things were going, her ex-husband responded evasively. Eventually, no more messages came.
At midnight, a message arrived. The ex-husband wrote that their son was now safe.
It was not a spontaneous act. The man had prepared meticulously. He deregistered his residence and, a few days later, his employer and the daycare center received his resignation letters.
At passport control at the airport, he showed the police officer permission to travel with the boy. The document was signed by the mother. However, it was from the trip to Jordan that the ex-husband had taken with the son a few weeks earlier. He had also kept the boy’s passport since that trip.
Nobody noticed this during the check, according to the prosecution’s indictment.
At midnight, father and son landed in Amman.
It was a journey without return: the now 13-year-old teenager still lives in the Jordanian capital today.
Anxious hours in Amman
For Irina Vencu, a years-long struggle began.
She had to conduct it from Switzerland because Jordan was too sensitive a place for her to travel to. Her ex-husband had divorced her under Muslim law.
Only in 2018, three years after the abduction, did she fly to Amman. There she intended to sign an agreement at the Romanian embassy.
The basis was a 2015 judgment of the Zurich District Court. A few months after the abduction, the court had granted her sole custody after all and regulated maintenance payments.
In return, her husband would have been able to visit his son in Switzerland without risking the reopening of criminal proceedings.
During the short stay, she finally met her son again. But the joy was overshadowed. The mother noticed that “something was not right with him.”
The brief meeting was supervised because the clan of her ex-husband feared she wanted to bring Josif Hector back to Switzerland.
After the trip, the mother’s fears were confirmed: she learned that Josif Hector had been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder.
After that, she was not allowed to visit her son for all the following years.
He believes he is right
After his arrest and transfer to Switzerland in July 2025, the ex-husband was placed in pre-trial detention in Zurich.
He admits that he took his son to Jordan. However, he claims that he only made the decision shortly before the act.
The businessman, who benefits from the presumption of innocence until a final conviction, answers the judge’s questions at length.
He also makes clear that he does not see responsibility for the secret trip as lying with himself.
Rather, he feared that Irina Vencu would take the boy to Romania to live there with him.
In court, the father emphasizes: making mistakes during a family conflict is not the same as doing something criminal.
“I did not perceive the trip as an abduction.”
He also claims that it was never planned that Josif Hector would never be able to travel to his mother again. According to him, this resulted from court decisions in Switzerland.
“Because of the lawsuits, it was not possible for me to come to Switzerland.”
He says he never wanted to prevent contact between mother and son.
However, he offers neither remorse nor an apology.
Instead, he says: “My son has suffered no harm. He is a healthy, athletic and intelligent teenager.”
The problems he has, he says, have nothing to do with the events of that time.
“I am a very caring father. If he had not been doing well, we would have acted immediately.”
Prosecutor demands 6.5 years in prison
For the prosecutor, however, it is a clear case.
The 44-year-old businessman planned the abduction meticulously.
He acted entirely selfishly and showed considerable criminal energy.
“This is the worst trauma that can happen to a child. It is also extremely traumatic for the mother, because the sudden total loss comes very close to the death of a child.”
The relationship between mother and son has been permanently altered by the abduction.
“Anyone who takes a mother away from a child not yet three years old endangers the child’s welfare.”
The prosecutor is seeking a prison sentence of 6.5 years for deprivation of liberty and abduction, removal of a minor, coercion, and unlawful receipt of social insurance benefits.
This also relates to the businessman having paid out pension assets from a joint life insurance policy amounting to almost CHF 50,000 without Irina Vencu’s consent.
In addition, the prosecutor is requesting a ten-year expulsion order.
Defense attorney seeks acquittal
The Jordanian’s defense attorney emphasizes that before the departure, both parents had been the child’s primary caregivers.
Only later, after the divorce judgment, was sole custody transferred to the mother.
Since the father was the child’s closest attachment figure, the legal offense of abduction does not apply, in her view.
She requests an acquittal, except on the count of removing a minor.
According to the defense attorney, another point is central: the wishes of the shared son.
The teenager had been offered the opportunity to return to Switzerland, but he did not wish to do so. A letter allegedly proves this.
However, Irina Vencu’s lawyer questioned the document.
The letter was allegedly not written by the child himself but merely copied by him.
During his pre-trial detention, the accused has never received a visit from his son.
Perhaps because there was concern the boy might then not be able to return to Jordan.
The defense attorney offers another explanation: family members could not bring the boy into Switzerland because of possible criminal-law risks.
The mother continues to hope
Irina Vencu has been separated from her son for eleven years.
He is now 13 years old and still lives in Jordan.
The court heard that he lives with a stepmother and half-sister in a large apartment in Amman and attends an international school.
Irina Vencu has had no contact with him for eight years.
She does not know how he is doing or whether she will see him again.
And although her ex-husband has been in pre-trial detention for more than a year, there has been no progress.
On the contrary: her ex-husband is seeking joint parental custody in family court.
At the district court proceedings, he stated that his son has a stable life in Jordan. He said it had not been fair that Irina Vencu had been granted sole custody at the time.
The mother is worried about her child’s future.
She says: “My son must know who he is and where he comes from. He should form his own opinion and be able to decide for himself.”
She hopes that the seed she planted in her son during the first years of his life will one day grow.
The court did not issue a verdict on Wednesday. It is expected later in September
