BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

22/08/2007

Belarusian Foreign Ministry negotiates safe return of three sisters from Syria

MINSK. Aug 22 (Interfax) - Three young sisters from Belarus, visiting their father in Syria, have finally returned to their home in Minsk, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry said.

"The girls were flown back from Beirut by Belavia in the evening on August 21," deputy chief of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry's Information Department Maria Vanshina said.

It was reported that on July 17 Belarusian citizen Margarita Abd Huwaiti sent her three minor daughters to Syria to visit their father.

She said her ex-husband and his relatives did not want to let girls go back to their home country. From phone conversations with her daughters, Abd Huwaiti learnt that, "the husband's relatives took away their passports, made them wear long clothes and headscarves, forced them to wear the hijab and to read the Koran." The news prompted her to contact the Belarusian Foreign Ministry.

Negotiations on the return of the girls took more than two weeks.

Abd Huwaiti said that she met her future husband while both studied at the Institute of Culture in Minsk. They married in 1991, and had three daughters. In 1999, they divorced, and Japar, her husband, vanished. In Belarus he was announced as missing, however, three years ago Japar rang his ex-wife and invited his daughters to come for vacations. They took him up on the offer this year.

Source:

http://www.interfax.com/3/305310/news.aspx