Muneerah Al-Tarrah may as well start packing her bags.

If all goes as planned next week in Maricopa County Superior Court, the 28-year-old Kuwaiti woman who committed a hit-and-run - and ran - will be in London in time for the royal wedding.

Judge Doug Rayes on Tuesday signaled that he'll likely go along with a plan to quash her arrest warrant so she can travel to London to seek psychiatric help without fear of being slapped in handcuffs.

Once that's done, the woman who ran from Mesa - leaving a man dead in the street - and then ran from the country, leaving dazed judges and lawyers in her wake, promises to return to Phoenix to face what could be a sizable number of years in prison.

Really, she will.

The whole thing would be hilarious were it not for the late Todd DeGain and his father, Glenn, who has endured so many bungles and blunders in this case that you begin to wonder whether they really are mistakes.

Al-Tarrah was drunk twice over when she hit Todd DeGain in September 2005. She was caught a short time later.

From the start, Glenn DeGain warned that Al-Tarrah - born in the U.S. to a Kuwaiti diplomat but raised in Kuwait - would run if given the chance.

He was right. She fled to Kuwait three months later, not long after $150,000 in bail money was accidentally released.

A court snafu, we were assured, as was the failure to collect her passport.

No one knows what happened to the money - or who actually ended up with it - and no one's been accountable for, well, anything in this comedy of errors. If they are errors, that is.

Over the years, the Kuwaiti government has been leaning on the Justice and State departments, hoping to get Al-Tarrah off the hook. Now it may have finally figured out a way.

It seems Al-Tarrah has been traumatized ever since her few hours in jail - a trauma that haunts her still, 5 1/2 years later. A trauma that apparently can only be treated if she goes to London. The problem is, a trip to England would trigger her arrest and, we are told, her suicide.

"There is a high likelihood that if taken into custody, she would never make it back for sentencing," her attorney Brian Strong told Rayes on Tuesday.

And so comes yet another proposition, this time not from the Kuwaiti government, but from Al-Tarrah's family:

They will post a $300,000 bond, and in return, Rayes will quash the arrest warrant, allowing Interpol to lift the red flag that marks her as a fugitive. Once she gets treatment in London, she will, we are assured, return to Arizona.

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery has decided to go along with the deal, saying it may be his best and only chance of reeling Al-Tarrah in.

Either that, or joining the cast of characters made a fool of by this woman.

Judge Rayes seems eager not to join that particular troupe. Before he considers the plan next week, he wants assurances that the Kuwaitis will cooperate.

"I want to feel comfortable that if we work out some sort of deal, that she gets back here," he said.

DeGain doesn't believe for a minute that Al-Tarrah will return. And he's not buying prosecutors' assurances that Interpol would again flag her as a fugitive if she doesn't.

"If you agree to take $300,000 to kill a warrant, give up the only leverage you have, the only inconvenience left to her which obviously is important - this reason to travel - you do this, and this is the final step in making all of this go away."

Which is, he believes, precisely the plan. The county gets $300,000. The feds accommodate a government wallowing in oil. Al-Tarrah gets her freedom, and DeGain gets what he's always gotten from this system we call justice.

Not a darn thing.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com.