Mother of four girls ordered back to Italy clings to AFP car as her daughters are taken away
Kate Kyriacou, on Flight EK433
October 04, 2012 12:01PM
THE plane carrying the four sisters ordered back to Italy has landed in Singapore for a brief stopover.
UPDATE
The girls looked miserable but were quiet as they were escorted off the plane ahead of other passengers.
The two older girls appeared to have been separated from their younger sister ALL were travelling with minders. The children are travelling on flight EK433, which stopped at Singapore en route from Brisbane to Dubai. A second leg will then take them to Rome.
Earlier, The Courier-Mail reported how the girls cried for their mother, cried for home and begged uniformed officers to let them go.
As the four sisters at the centre of an international custody ruling were last night dragged screaming onto Emirates flight EK 433 to Dubai, uniformed officers were forced to lift and drag the girls to get them to the plane.
Passengers at gate 75 watched on in alarm as up to a dozen federal officers were used to move the girls to the nearby Emirates lounge to await boarding.
"Let me go, I want my mum, I want my mum," one of the younger girls wailed, each arm held securely by a federal officer.
The girls were led out one at a time, the eldest sister escorted up an escalator restrained by four police officers.
"Let me go, I want to go home," the hysterical girl screamed.
Later, as they moved her back past waiting passengers, the screaming girl begged to be released.
"Please let go. You're hurting me. I don't want to go."
The officers holding her by the arms were forced to drag the girl when she used her feet to stop their progress.
Passengers stared as the girls were led up a nearby escalator, many murmuring the scene was "awful" and terrible.
Others, visibly distressed, made phone calls to recount the terrible scene to loved ones.
"I really would be very concerned about them and I think there might be a risk that they try to abscond" - leading child psychologist fears stressed sisters are a flight risk.
Last night, it was reported that the mother of the four girls clung in desperation to the rear of an Australian Federal Police unmarked car as it drove away with three of the girls inside.
Just hours later, all four girls were taken straight to Brisbane International Airport and through a special high-security entrance.
Two cars arrived at the private entrance and two young girls struggled as they were pulled from a dark-coloured Ford Territory by several men in suits at 8.43pm.
The second car its occupants unknown pulled out of sight behind a roller door.
Earlier, their mother collapsed in the road sobbing, the end of a day of unfathomable anxiety and stress, as her children were driven away.
The Courier-Mail also witnessed one of the girls trying to escape from the rear of another car before she was restrained by one of two male officers in the vehicle.
They had just detained the girl after she tried to flee the apartment where they found her and her sisters.
She banged on the rear window of the vehicle as it drove off, tearfully crying out that she wanted to talk to the journalist.
The four girls had spent their last hours of freedom together waiting in fear at the home of an elderly family friend.
They watched the TV news as they waited for the knock on the door that would signal their deportation.
This final refuge for the girls, who spent weeks in hiding with their great-grandmother this year when the court first ordered they be returned, was a unit in a retirement village on the Sunshine Coast.
The normally tranquil surrounds were yesterday evening a scene of tears, anxiety and defiance.
The eldest girl spoke briefly to The Courier-Mail but was too fearful of the consequences for her mother, who the court has banned from talking to the media, to give any information.
"I'll get my mum in trouble, I have to go," she said.
The woman looking after them, a close friend of their great-grandmother, said all the information the girls had about their fate was coming from the media.
"All we're knowing is what's on the news," she said, her voice trembling with emotion.
"We watched the five o-clock news, the four-thirty news and the six o'clock news," she said.
She said they were expecting police to come and detain them any minute.
She predicted police would have a fight on their hands when they arrived.
"We're not going," one of the girls said.
The woman said she had agreed to mind the girls as all of the family was at the Family Court in Brisbane.
"They're the loveliest little girls, they've been very good, but they're very anxious and they just want to see their mum, and I just want their mother to come. I don't want to give them over until their mother comes."
A close friend of the girls' mother told The Courier-Mail the looming prospect of being returned to Italy against their wishes had made the girls anxious and withdrawn in recent days.
The friend, who has been close to the family since their arrival in Australia two years ago, saw the girls on Saturday for a barbecue after they had been on a camping trip with their mother.
"They were withdrawn, clingy, very cuddly, it was Mummy this and Mummy that," she told The Courier-Mail.
"Even a holiday didn't make any difference.
"It's been emotional turmoil for the kids and for their mother. They don't know whether they're Arthur or Martha.
"What do you expect from little kids being taken away from their Mum?"
The friend said the girls loved their father but didn't want to live with him.
Their mother had "never once influenced her kids in any single way or brainwashed them against their father", she said.
"This whole thing is unfair.
"Let the Australian people know that these girls have never had a choice from the beginning, it's been all about the Hague and it's been all about everybody's wishes but theirs."
The removal of the girls would take a heavy toll on their mother, she said.
"I'm getting someone to watch my kids tonight because I need to be with (the mother)."
Initial reporting - Tuck Thompson, Mark Solomons
A JUDGE sending four Italian girls home against their wishes "sincerely hopes" their distraught mother will return with them after their father agreed not to lay criminal charges.
