All The Theories About Ahmed Kandil’s & Rabia Khan’s Whereabouts

The final episode of Netflix’s Unsolved Mysteries Volume 3, titled “Abducted by a Parent,” delves into the separate cases of two alleged kidnappers, Ahmed Kandil and Rabia Khan. Though the circumstances aren’t identical, both scenarios feature a helpless parent left without answers after a former spouse disappeared with their child or children. As police continue to seek new leads, investigators and true-crime enthusiasts alike have presented several theories on where the abductors might be hiding.

The season finale first introduced anesthesiologist Rebecca Downey, the mother of Amina and Belel, who she shares with Kandil. Whereas Downey grew up in Berlin with a Christian background, Kandil was raised in Cairo, Egypt, and is Muslim. After 10 years of marriage, their differences eventually proved to be too great, and they separated in June 2013. In Unsolved Mysteries, Downey described her ex as “moving in a much more conservative religious direction” and wanting their children to be raised with similar beliefs.

On Aug. 28, 2014, Kandil picked up Amina and Belel from Downey’s Virginia home to take them on a four-day trip to Toronto for a college visit with their cousin. When her ex stopped responding to her messages and the children didn’t show up for their first day of school on Sept. 2, she grew increasingly concerned. So she called Kandil’s father in Giza, and though he claimed not to know anything, she took his lack of concern as a “warning sign” that he “must have known something.”

Where Is Ahmed Kandil?

Downey’s friend, Daphney Frederique, found Kandil’s house completely empty, and flight records later showed that they never flew to Canada but rather had landed in Istanbul, following a stopover in Kyiv. Meanwhile, financial records revealed that, prior to his disappearance, Kandil had gone to a survivalist camp in the mountains and learned how to shoot guns. He also bought camping equipment for himself and the children and shipped them overseas. The FBI eventually issued an arrest warrant for Kandil on charges of international kidnapping in November 2014.

The following month, Downey got her first substantial clue when someone checked Amina’s email from the southern tip of Turkey, near the border of Syria. Finally, in September 2015, she received an email from Kandil with the subject line, “Kids are okay.” He went on to explain that they were living on a small farm, adding that he took them abroad before she could get full custody of them. Even so, he claimed that once they were “at the right age,” they can decide for themselves where they want to live. (As of November 2022, Amina is 19, and Belel is 16.)

Though that email also originated from Turkey, Kandil led her back to her first suspicion when he applied for an Egyptian ID card in 2016, listing his parents’ address. What’s more, his father has a farm somewhere between Alexandria and Cairo, leading investigators to currently believe that the trio is “possibly in Egypt.” The issue with that is that parental kidnapping is not considered a crime in Egypt, so Downey, who’s hired private investigators and contacted congressmen and senators, says she has “no recourse” as a mother.

Frederique, for her part, has her own theories about why Downey has never heard from her children. In the Netflix series, she said that she believes that Kandil either “staged some accident and told the kids she’s dead,” or he just banned them from the internet completely.

Where Is Rabia Khan?

The second half of the episode shifted focus to father Abdul Khan, an intensive care unit pulmonologist whose son, Aziz, has been missing since 2017. When their son was 3 years old, Abdul and wife Rabia decided to separate before finalizing their divorce in 2015. When custody evaluators eventually recommended that Abdul be awarded primary custody of their son, his ex made abuse allegations, resulting in a year-and-a-half-long investigation during which he was not allowed to see the boy.

Abdul later learned in court that Rabia had married a college friend named Elliot Bourgeois with whom she reconnected as their marriage was ending. Following the investigation, the Atlanta district attorney eventually recommended that Abdul be awarded “immediate temporary physical and legal custody” of Aziz. Their father-son reunion was scheduled to take place in an Atlanta courtroom on Nov. 28, 2017, but Rabia never showed up with their son.

The evidence later showed that Rabia and Bourgeois, who quit his job, had taken Aziz out of school 10 days earlier, and he’d never returned. The couple also sold their cars to CarMax in Atlanta, shut down their cell phones, closed their bank accounts, closed all their social media accounts, and disappeared.

After two years, the court issued a felony kidnapping warrant against Rabia for abducting Aziz, and the U.S. Marshals got involved in the case. In early 2020, investigators attempted to interview Rabia’s “evasive” parents in Duluth, Georgia, but the couple simply referred them to their lawyer. Outside of the documentation that the duo sold their cars in 2017, there have not been any other credible leads or sightings.

In Unsolved Mysteries, authorities theorized that the family could have assumed new identities, allowing them to establish a line of credit and create a whole new life. Another possibility? Somebody — whether it be a friend or family member — could be financing them so that they could live off cash. Aziz turns 12 on Nov. 13, 2022, and Abdul isn’t giving up hope that he will one day find his son.