The Royal Court building

A THREE-year-old Jersey girl who was abducted for six weeks by her father and taken to Italy has been reunited with her mother following a landmark European ruling.

For the first time today, the mother tells the harrowing tale of how the police chased her in-laws through the Italian mountains for three hours trying to get her daughter back.

Speaking as she cuddled her daughter back in Jersey, the mother, known only as Mrs X – the parents have not been named to protect the identity of the child – said: ‘I was hoping he would do the right thing and would bring her back.

It was a nightmare. For two weeks I did not know if she was dead or alive because they did not let me speak to her.’

The child was returned following the first case of its kind in Jersey Royal Court and with the help of the Jersey and Italian authorities. In an unprecedented move, the Law Officers’ department issued proceedings under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction which forced the father to return the child to Jersey.

• Full story in today’s Jersey Evening Post