On January 29, for little Hager’s fifth birthday, her mother, her family and her kindergarten friends gathered at the park, and threw balloons in the air wishing her a happy birthday. Only Hager wasn’t there.
Since last March 9, little Hager is in Libya, taken there by her father, Mohamed, and never returned to his birthplace, and to the embrace of his mother Federica. It was supposed to be a short trip to go and say hello to his paternal grandfather who was not well. «Maximum two weeks», mother Federica had recommended, who had never been separated from her little girl for so long. But the weeks have become months and the video calls and messages, initially daily, have become less frequent over timeuntil all communication has stopped.
Now Federica is in the throes of anguish and no longer knows who to turn to to bring her daughter home.
History
Federica meets Mohamed in Malta in 2016. She is twenty-five, he is three years older. She is there to learn English, she works in two different cafés to support herself outside the home. He is there following her sister, a Libyan diplomat. Mohamed and Federica fall in love and get married in Malta, and in the meantime she also marries his religion, converting to Islam. She then becomes pregnant, and they return to Italy. Hager grows up, but Mohamed is restless. He doesn’t work, he doesn’t learn Italian, he hardly takes care of his family at all. She dreams of going back to Libya, probably, and plans it too, given how things turned out.
In March 2022 Mohamed leaves with the little girl in tow. «He told me that his dad was not well and that he was afraid he might leave us at any moment»Federica says. «She wanted to take the little girl to him to show her one last time, and on the other hand I had no reason to suspect such a thing: he had already returned to Libya other times, I myself had gone there to meet her family. I don’t see why I should have worried.”
But this time things are different. “When it’s time to go back, come up with an excuse. Then another, and yet another, and meanwhile the weeks go by. First he tells me that he underwent tonsil surgery, then that his passports were requisitioned at the airport. I always believe him, but I see that little by little he calls me less and less, I have to run after him, beg him for a video call or a photo of the baby ».
When Federica contacts the Italian embassy to see if she can help her husband and daughter with the requisitioned passports, she realizes something is not right. The embassy has nothing of the sort. “It was the Libyan militias, what do you want the embassy to know about it,” he tells her. But she begins to no longer believe him, and goes to file a child abduction complaint. It’s June 9, Hager has been away from home for three months already. Word of the complaint made in Italy somehow reaches Mohamed and, even if Federica denies having made it, he gets annoyed and cuts off all contact with her. No video calls, no phone calls, no messages: Federica’s number is blocked on Whatsapp.
In the meantime, Mohamed in Libya starts a lawsuit for annulment of the marriage contract, and asks for custody of the childaccusing Federica of not being a good Muslim, and using to prove it a sheet that he had made her sign renouncing religion. There, in Libya, the court is that of the Shari’a, and a bad Muslim can lose all rights to her child. The Italian courts, on the other hand, have already decided that Mohamed is not a good parent, and have ordered the immediate repatriation of the minor. “However, Libya has not signed the 1980 Hague Convention on child abduction, and therefore there is no way to enforce the Italian provision that entrusts the child to her there,” he explains. Duilio Cortassa, lawyer of the LJLex studio who is following the case with the internationalist Francesca Graziani.
If it were ever important, Federica is also a good nun: there is also proof of this a certificate from the Imam of the Great Mosque of Romeand she herself will soon go to Tripoli to prove it, where a new hearing on her case has been set for February 21st.
The future of Federica and Hager
“I’m furious with him, but it’s not him I’m thinking about right now: my thoughts go to when I see my daughter again: I’m afraid he won’t recognize me, although I think that’s impossible» says Federica, who when she goes to Tripoli for the hearing will have the right to see her little girl for three hours, from 10 to 13, at the police headquarters. The court established it, the same one that will have to decide whether or not she is a good Muslim, and if she deserves to raise Hager. But even if she were to speak in her favour, Federica has nothing in Libya, she doesn’t know Arabic, she doesn’t have support or a job: how would she raise her daughter there?
Accompanying her will be her father, her Italian lawyer and a Libyan lawyer advised by the embassy, ​​who however speaks exclusively Arabic, which makes coordination with the Italian lawyers particularly complicated. But the point is another: for the situation to really unblock, a political intervention is essential.
“The embassy has a similar precedent from the time when d’Alema was foreign minister, and he personally worked to resolve the issue,” explains the lawyer Cortassa. «Something is actually moving: we were received by undersecretary Andrea Delmastro, and we know that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is also working hard. We have had a hearing from the Foreign Commission of the Chamber, and we must thank the deputies Emanuele Pozzolo and Giangiacomo Calovini, who are spending a lot on the matter. We also know that the president Giorgia Meloni has already been informed ».
Moreover, the prime minister, who was visiting Libya just a week ago, to discuss energy agreements with our country: there he met the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Najla Al Mangoush, who could be the key element in resolving this ugly affair.
«We can only hope that there will be a decisive political intervention, even more so considering that Hager’s aunt, Mohamed’s sister, was the personal assistant of the Libyan foreign minister. We trust in a direct contact who asks her, and the Minister of Justice, to take action to return her child to her mother: they are also two women, we believe they can understand Federica’s desperation», says the lawyer Cortassa.
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Source: Vanity Fair

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