It’s been nearly nine years since Nina Abequa was murdered and her children were kidnapped to Jordan. In the ensuing years, Nesime Dokur has tried to maintain a low profile. She seldom grants interviews, and has generally tried to shield the children from the publicity that surrounded their abduction and redemption. By all accounts, Sami and Lisa have thrived during the years they’ve spent with their aunt. They are, as they always have been, thoroughly American kids.

Yahyeh Abequa survived his humiliating defeat and remained a key player in the Jordanian government.

His brother, Mohammed Ishmail Abequa, was convicted in 1994 of murder and kidnapping.Nesime Dokur always knew that sooner or later the man who strangled her sister and kidnapped her niece and nephew would walk out of a Jordanian prison a free man.

She knew that Jordanian courts often take a lenient view of men who kill supposedly unfaithful wives, and even though Mohammed Abequa was sentenced to 15 years in prison, she never expected that he serve his full term.  But she never expected that he  would be released after serving only five years in prison, or that the release would be the result of a royal edict by the late King Hussein’s son and successor, young King Abdullah.

"We never expected that he would serve the full term," Feinberg said in 2000, when news of Abequa’s  release reached her. "But we thought he would serve more than five years."

Abequa’s release came as a complete surprise to officials in New Jersey where he still faces a murder indictment, said Morris County Prosecutor John Dangler. "We expected that he would serve at least 10 years," Dangler said.

U.S. officials also expected that they would have been notified when and if Abequa was released, Dangler said. But that didn't happen. In fact, U.S. authorities learned of Abequa's release by accident, when Abequa himself contacted an embassy official who had visited him from time to time while he was incarcerated.

"They [Jordanians] were as surprised as anyone," Dangler said.

Jordanian officials explained that the decision to honor Abequa's plea for a pardon was made after consulting with members of the slain woman's family in her native Turkey.

But Dokur insisted at the time that the Turkish branch of the family had no authority to weigh in with the Jordanian government for his release.

"Nihal was an American in the U.S. Army ... the children are U.S. citizens, and yet no one cared enough to find out how the American branch of the family feels. ... This kind of injustice is the reason we left the Middle East," Dokur said.

Authorities say they hold no hope that the Jordanian government will ever turn Abequa over to U.S. authorities to face murder charges.

But Dokur and Feinberg still worry that Abequa, who sometimes wrote to the children from prison, may secretly return to the U.S. someday, slipping across the border and perhaps begin the whole nightmare all over again.

"They're watching the borders, and that's fine,” Feinberg has said. “But what if he comes into the country illegally?"