It’s standard protocol for Los Angeles Airport Police officers to keep property left behind for 97 days.
Officers give it their best effort to find the owners, but they eventually give up. Clean clothes are sent to a shelter. Other property with value is auctioned. What’s left is tossed.
But officers just can’t throw away one item found Sept. 14, 2014 at LAX’s Tom Bradley International Terminal.
“The wedding album is a very good quality,” Airport police Officer Rob Pedregon said. “It’s on a very thick (paper), almost like poster board. It’s very high quality.”
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Newlyweds identified
It belongs to Safiullah Jabar Khil and his bride, Halimi. He wore a black tuxedo with white shirt. She wore a white dress, a tiara and carried red flowers.
Where they are, nobody knows.
According to writing on the album, they married March 12, 2012 at the Qasr e Oranus Wedding Hall, which appears on the Internet to be a grand building in Kabul, Afghanistan. Their photos were taken by Yama Ramin Media Production, which has its website, telephone numbers and email addresses listed on the album.
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Airport officers tried contacting the company, but the distance, communication and distrust on the other end did not lead to success.
Officers suspect the couple brought the album with them as they traveled from the Middle East to Los Angeles. It was packed inside a locked black briefcase containing a mirror, and a tablecloth and matching napkins adorned with green and orange leaves.
Can’t tap flight records
Although it would seem airport officers can simply tap into computers to look up the couple’s names and their travel protocol, Pedregon said that’s not the case.
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Officers need a judge to approve a search warrant to present to the airlines or to tap into computer files for information about the travelers. It’s not likely a judge would approve such a warrant to investigate a wedding album, he said.
“Post 9-11 security is so hard,” Pedregon said. “The airlines, they are very hesitant to share the information, especially for something that’s not life and death.”
On Friday, police took to Facebook and Twitter to try to spread the word. They are hoping their followers share their posts, make them viral and find the happy couple.
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“It’s like a cold case,” Pedregon said. “We want to make this a great story for everybody and reunite this family with their lost memories.”