SOUTH SINAI: “My husband left home many years ago for no reason, says Ibtihal. “I embraced my two daughters and decided to be both mother and father to them, to forget him the way he forgot me. I worked hard to send the two girls to school.
“I was shocked when one day my husband kidnapped the two girls and disappeared. I looked for them everywhere. Their future is in danger. The court gave me custody of my daughters but who will help me implement the court order?
More than a year later, Ibtihal is still looking for an answer to that question.
It all began when differences started to cause a rift between the married couple. Things got so bad that four years ago, he decided to leave home and take another wife.
“I decided to work, she says, “In early April 2007, my daughters We’am and Rawan did not come home. I looked for them at school but was told they were absent that day.
Ibtihal remembers how common acquaintances told her that her husband had taken the girls to Cairo, where he lived with his second wife. She rushed to the police station and filed administrative report No. 3060 in Sharm El-Sheikh in 2007, demanding custody of her daughters.
“The children and I lived with their grandmother, who loved them so much. She almost lost her eyesight crying over them. I looked for them everywhere but to no avail. My husband did all he could to deprive me of seeing my children, she says.
The attorney general of South Sinai ordered her husband to give the children back, but no one can implement it because the children and their father have disappeared.
According to Ibtihal, investigation proved that her daughters’ lives were peaceful and stable and the court decided she was more socially and educationally fit to have custody of the girls, who were still under 12 at the time.
