A Muslim father at the centre of an arranged marriage case involving his teenage daughter will be jailed for a year for contempt of court unless he takes speedy steps to have her brought back from Egypt, a High Court judge has warned.

Mr Justice George Birmingham said that unless the father used his influence to ensure the daughter’s return, he would on December 6th face a term of 12 months’ imprisonment.

He was involved in getting her out of the country in January 2012 in clear contempt of court orders, the judge found.

The girl, who lived here from a young age, underwent an arranged marriage here at the age of 16 with a 29-year-old man but, following legal proceedings, that was declared void in 2011 due to absence of full, free and informed consent.



Concerns

The Health Service Executive had intervened after teachers and social workers expressed concerns the girl had, or was being, coerced by her parents into marriage.

After a High Court judge declared the marriage null, her mother obtained travel documents from the Egyptian embassy and both parents were found in contempt of court. The girl was later brought to Egypt where the marriage is due to take place.

Yesterday, Mr Justice Birmingham agreed to an application from the HSE for the father to be committed to prison for contempt. In the hope the father would take steps to purge that contempt, the judge said he would defer enforcement of the imprisonment order for four weeks.

The judge said it may not have been a coincidence, given the father’s political and philosophical views, that he had returned to Ireland and presented himself at a Garda station shortly after removal from office of Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi by the military.

The parents and the girl’s sister solemnly swore to the court on the Koran, shortly after contempt proceedings were brought, that no harm would come to the girl from them, any family member or anyone else, the judge noted.

Soon afterwards, the HSE received a letter from the solicitors for the parents and the girl’s fiance stating she had gone to Egypt.

Despite further orders restraining the father from leaving the jurisdiction, he left for Egypt and a warrant was issued for his arrest before he returned last July.



Chief registrar

The judge said a court was told in January 2012 that the girl had left a voicemail message on the phone of the chief registrar of the High Court stating she wished to stay in Egypt and did not want her parents to be in trouble.

That call served to raise the concern level about the girl, particularly as she had a court-appointed guardian acting on her behalf, he said.

In an affidavit in January 2012, the father said there was “little I can do” to effect her return and his tone of helplessness had been “a constant refrain”, the judge remarked.

The contempt matter was before him a number of times since July and it was made clear to the father that if he was to encourage his daughter to travel to Ireland, even for a short time, it would be enormously to his credit.

The judge himself had spoken to the daughter by phone, in the Irish consulate in Alexandria, in which she said she would not be travelling to Ireland at this stage, was engaged to be married, would travel after the wedding and did not want her father to go to prison.



Departure

If this was simply a case that the father had breached orders by travelling to Egypt, there would be no question of him facing prison, the judge said.

However, the court was satisfied a criminal standard of proof had been met in relation to the father’s involvement in the girl’s departure from the State and failure or refusal to secure her return.

The father’s account of her leaving the country, saying he returned from work to find his wife and children gone on January 4th, 2012, and only learned the next day that his daughter was in Egypt, was “incredible and an affront to common sense”.