As he watched the footage of a convoy of police vehicles driving through the security gates of the headquarters of a religious sect, AbdelRahman Hashem felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe now his two children would get answers to what happened to their mother.
The last time the children heard from her was seven years ago. In an email sent from a budget hotel in India, she had written: "Mommy loves and misses them so much, so very much … they are both my best friends and my favorite people in the whole world." Two days later, she disappeared.
Lisa Wiese was 30 when she vanished during a trip to Kerala, India, in March 2019. She was a member of the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light (AROPL), an Islamic sect based in a former orphanage in Crewe, in the north-west of England.
In April, 500 police officers raided the sect's headquarters. Twelve people were arrested on suspicion of a range of offences including modern-day slavery, human trafficking, forced marriage and rape. All 12 have now been bailed pending further inquiries.
The police investigation, code-named Operation Decker, has targeted individuals and not the religious group as a whole. It centres on allegations from a woman now in the Republic of Ireland. It has nothing to do with Wiese, and AROPL previously told the Guardian that it did not have any information about her disappearance.
Wiese is a German national and police there and in India opened investigations shortly after she went missing. They identified a member of AROPL they wanted to question but made little progress with their inquiries.
Now Wiese's ex-husband hopes the police raid on the group's UK headquarters may lead to answers. "I want Cheshire police to widen their investigation to look into the disappearance of Lisa," he said. "German and Indian police both wanted to question the same member of AROPL. Surely the police in the UK can help make this happen."
'I miss them every single day'
Friends described Wiese as hard-headed and free-spirited. "She was so warm and extroverted," said a friend. Another described her as the "most empathetic person" he knew.
In 2011 she had surprised her German family by converting to Islam. She then moved to Egypt, where she joined the newly formed religious sect AROPL. Its teachings blend Islamic theology with internet conspiracy theories about the Illuminati, aliens posing as humans and magical powers of healing using the curative properties of snakes, tigers and chameleons.
The most devoted followers live in a tight-knit community. Adult members of AROPL wear black beanie hats and the children are home-schooled within the community. (AROPL has nothing to do with the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, often known as Ahmadis, which was founded on the Asian subcontinent and has a large presence in the UK.)
In Egypt, Wiese had met AbdelRahman, the brother of the founder of AROPL. "Lisa had a kind soul," he said. "She cared deeply about helping the less fortunate." They had two children together.
AbdelRahman never joined the sect and in 2017, when the couple split, he moved to the US.
Wiese moved with AROPL, first to Germany, where the sect established new headquarters, and then to Sweden, where they moved in 2018. There, according to her former husband, things began to change. He said: "She wanted to leave the group, go back to work and try to set up a life for herself in Germany."
In early 2019, her two young children moved to the US to temporarily live with their father, and the two parents discussed how they could find a way to live in the same country, to better co-parent the boys.
In a moving letter she wrote to her ex-husband as they left, Wiese detailed the boys' routines and habits. "I always want them to know that I would always want to be with them," she wrote. She asked her ex-husband to explain that "I miss them every single day and that I love them so very much".
At about the same time, she messaged a friend in Germany and asked him to hold on to some money for her. On 7 March, Wiese flew to India with a member of the sect. Wiese's airline ticket was paid for by a different member of AROPL.
Various explanations have been given for the trip. Some have said Wiese wanted space from AROPL. Others have said it was her family she wanted to distance herself from.
It has also been suggested that Wiese travelled to India to look for a property for the sect. That suggestion was denied by AROPL's lawyer, who told the Guardian that Wiese was in India visiting a friend.
Whatever the reason, four days after arriving in Kerala, Wiese disappeared.
Gmail account deactivated and deleted
Wiese's movements in India offer few clues about her fate.
Soon after landing, Wiese messaged her friend, asking him to wire more than €500 – part of the money she had asked him to look after. "I'm in India right now and need it," she wrote.
Her entry card submitted at the airport claimed she would stay at Amritapuri ashram, a Hindu retreat. But the Indian police found no trace of her having visited the complex.
Instead, it appears Wiese stayed in a budget hotel perched high on the cliffs above Varkala beach, paid for with cash. She stayed for four or five days. The hotel kept no records, and the precise date of her departure is not clear.
In the days before she vanished, Wiese sent more WhatsApp messages to a friend in Germany. And she sent her husband voice notes for their children. She sounded happy, he said.
On 11 March 2019, four days after arriving in India, her ex-husband received an email from her account with the message for their two children: "I miss them so much."
On the same day, Wiese's mother, Katrin Wiese, received what she would later describe as a strangely impersonal email, stating that her phone had been stolen: "Just so you know, I can only be reached via email."
Two days later, her Gmail account was deactivated and deleted.
No one has reported seeing or hearing from Wiese since. Her phone has not been used; the money her friend wired to her was never picked up. There was no activity on her known bank accounts.
Three months later, in June 2019, after she failed to make contact on her son's birthday, Wiese's mother reported her disappearance to the German police. They commenced a missing persons investigation in cooperation with the authorities in India.
Wiese's sister Karoline Heling said at the time: "We believe that Lisa would have never [gone] away for this long without contacting us, especially her sons that she loves so much, she knows they would be very worried. We cannot understand why we have not heard anything from her for over three months. This is not typical of Lisa and is not natural for her."
Long search for answers
Seven years after her disappearance, Wiese's family still have no answers. The investigations in Germany and India remain open but a series of delays and police failures, combined with a complicated transnational legal system, has meant there has been little progress.
Speaking from his home in Alaska, AbdelRahman feels let down and called on Cheshire police to help. "Five hundred, that's a lot of police officers," he said, referring to the police raid in Crewe. "It's like a very vast, vast difference."
He became upset when thinking about the toll the disappearance has had on their children, now 11 and 12 years old. "It's been years of this type of stuff, and trying to be soft and gentle like a mother would be with them, but also trying to be firm and a little strict like a father would be, because I have to be," he said.
When AbdelRahman told his youngest son that the police had raided the AROPL site, it brought up mixed emotions. "He smiled and was happy at first, and then he broke down crying," he said. "They hold out hope that she might be found."
AbdelRahman is less hopeful.
"We've been here for years, just me and my two children. At the end of the day, I just want answers for my children."
