Kidnapped kids back with mum

A MOTHER from Paphos whose two young children were abducted by their father last month will, in the end, spend Christmas with her children who were returned to her in a dramatic reunion late yesterday afternoon.

The month-long ordeal of separation ended yesterday after the father was arrested in the north and the children – aged six and two – were returned to her via the United Nations.
As the UN car drove them out of the buffer zone, an emotional Sophia Demetriou, 26, clutched her children to her breast, trying to shield her and her children’s faces from photographers and cameramen clustered around the vehicle.

Demetriou had, until yesterday, believed that their Syrian father had taken the two children to Syria via the north after kidnapping them on November 11.

Demetriou and her estranged husband had previously maintained an arrangement in which he had the children twice a week and on every other weekend. However on Saturday, November 11, the father picked up the two children but failed to return them. Police had also believed the man may have fled with the children to Syria.

Demetriou lived on the upper floor of a rented two-storey home, while her estranged husband and his father’s friends from Syria lived on the ground floor. The fact that all of them went missing on November 11 prompted her to believe that the abduction had been premeditated.

The UN contacted the police midday yesterday, notifying them that the father had been captured in the north and the two children were being safely held in custody.

An officer then called the mother, who immediately set off from Paphos to meet her children. She arrived at the Ledra Palace checkpoint at 5pm, where a UN car was waiting for her and drove her to the Turkish checkpoint, where she was reunited with her children.

It was reported that the father was arrested in the north on the grounds of illegal entry.

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