Italy is not Iran

Tragic footage on television this morning of four young girls being forcibly deported to Italy.

THEY 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.

...

"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.

Earlier reports tell a different story altogether:

Justice Forrest found the girls had been significantly influenced by the mother and those around her, including "extremely inappropriate and bizarre" views of their maternal great grandmother.

He told the hearing that when Queensland police found them in hiding, the great grandmother declared in front of them, "How exciting. Who is going to play you in the movie? They will have to find a good little dark-headed actress to play you".

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.

Handing down his long-awaited decision, Family Court judge Colin Forrest said the "sporty" siblings were all "born in Italy" and "did not know life in Australia" before being wrongfully retained here.

The woman broke the law and acted against the wishes of courts in two democracies. She's no Betty Mahmoody by any means. Televising the anguish was unhelpful and unfair.