Missing Cruise Passenger Had Troubled Relationship With Boyfriend
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ABC News(MIAMI) — The mystery of 47-year-old Fariba Amani’s disappearance is deepening and her family is now pointing an accusatory finger at her boyfriend, saying he knows more than he is telling investigators.
The Canadian woman vanished from the Bahamas Celebration somewhere on the high seas between the Bahamas and Florida on Feb. 29.
The disappearance triggered an 84-hour, 10,000 square mile Coast Guard search for Amani after her boyfriend Ramiz Golshani, 46, reported her missing to Celebration cruise crew members shortly after it returned to port.
Police and the FBI boarded the ship and launched investigation. Yet not a single trace of the mother of two was found.
Now Amani’s family hints that her boyfriend, whom they never met during his 8-month relationship with Amani, likely knows more than he is letting on. Particularly disturbing say the family, is Golshani’s silence.
“He has not reached out to us. He has not contacted us,” said Saloumeh Amani, Fariba’s sister.
All of them live near Vancouver, British Columbia. Saloumeh Amani said she had been suspicious of Gholshani ever since her sister told her the relationship was souring, and that she suspected Golshani was cheating.
Fariba Amani went as far as consulting a private detective, but later decided not to employ him because she feared Golshani’s reaction.
Golshani told The Vancouver Sun Tuesday night that he has told investigators everything he knows, but has remained quiet – not even speaking to Amani’s family – since returning to British Columbia because of what an emotional time it has been.
Golshani is not a suspect, and police and the FBI would not comment other than to say the investigation is ongoing.
Golshani told investigators that they’d been together after the Celebration Bahamas left port in Freeport, Bahamas, bound for the Port of Palm Beach. He said he last saw Fariba Amani at the ship’s gift shop before heading to the casino around 1 a.m. He says he went to sleep alone.
When the ship reached the Port of Palm Beach at around 7 a.m. Golshani said he awoke and began searching the ship for her. At around 8 a.m. he alerted the crew. Two searches ensued as the ship’s passengers began to disembark the 1,100 passenger ship, but they did not find her.
Customs officials confirm she was on the ship when it left Freeport around 8 p.m. because every passenger must swipe a card to get on or off the ship. But her whereabouts over the next 12 hours as the ship plowed through international waters remain a mystery.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio