THE four Italian sisters deported from Australia this week were reunited with their father after the hysterical girls were sent on separate international flights.

The girls arrived on consecutive days, the younger two flying into Rome early yesterday morning (Queensland time) and the eldest two landing late last night.

A handover with their father was organised inside the airport and it was understood they were brought out via a private exit normally reserved for politicians and other dignitaries.



Australian Federal Police were forced to split the sisters after they became distraught, screaming for their mother and begging to stay in Australia as officers tried to get them on to the plane.

Passengers became distressed as they watched the girls being dragged one by one on to an escalator to board a flight to Dubai.

One of the younger sisters screamed "I want my mum, I want my mum" as officers dragged her by the arms.

It took several uniformed policemen to restrain the eldest girl, 15, who tried to use her feet to prevent them from dragging her away.

"Please let go, you're hurting me," she screamed, as they lifted her from the ground. "I don't want to go."

The older girls appeared to have been removed from the plane to await a later flight.

The younger girls were subdued for the journey to Dubai, where their flight was delayed by two hours. They chatted with their minder, played video games and watched movies.

The girls were taken from the plane after other passengers had disembarked during stopovers and were not brought to public gate areas. Nor were they taken through passport control with other passengers after landing in Rome.

On the five-hour leg between Dubai and Rome, the young sisters cuddled together under a blanket. On arrival in Italy, it is believed they were collected by their father.

Before his daughters arrived, the father told Italian media the girls would not be prevented from seeing their mother.

"I have always said that if the children return I would never stop their mother from seeing them," he said.

The father refused to speak to any Australian media yesterday.

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MP blasts 'awful' case



SUNSHINE Coast MP Alex Somlyay has branded as "bloody awful" the manhandling of four sisters to Italy following a Hague Convention case that "virtually assured (the mother) of being guilty from the word go".

Mr Somlyay believes the girls were not kidnapped, as the father claimed, but moved for permanent resettlement on the Sunshine Coast.

The court found the father had not agreed to the move. But Mr Somlyay claimed, "it was only after the kids came out here that he had a change of heart".

Mr Somlyay said the process was "not fair" for the mother.

The mother was three times denied Legal Aid and forced to defend herself initially in the court.

The father, by invoking Hague anti-abduction rules, had the weight of Commonwealth-paid lawyers.

"It's not fair when one party in the litigation gets help and the other party doesn't," he said.

Errors in the mother's handling of the case led to a critical declaration of an Italian witness not being presented in proper form for the court. It claimed the father, at the time he signed the children's passports, was looking for work in Australia and intended to move here with the mother and children.

It also was bizarre that one set of Commonwealth bureaucrats was working to "rescue" the mother from an alleged abusive relationship in 2010, while other federal bureaucrats were working to send her and the children back to Italian courts.

"After 23 years in Parliament nothing surprises me," Mr Somlyay said.