Atiya Anjum-Wilkinson boarded a flight from Islamabad to Manchester today, after Pakistani authorities traced her to a home in the city of Sialkot in the Punjab, where she was found living with her father's extended family.
Her mother, Gemma Wilkinson, 32, of Ashton-under-Lyne, was due to meet her at the airport this evening. She discovered her daughter was safe on Christmas Day, bringing to an end three years of anguish in which she has had no idea of her daughter's whereabouts, while the girl's father, Rizwan Ali Anjum, has repeatedly refused to disclose her location.
Atiya was recovered after the case was raised with Pakistan's Foreign Minister by a local Member of the European Parliament (MEP) earlier this month. However, Greater Manchester Police are understood to have known for years that Atiya may have been in Pakistan and the case has led to calls for reform of international laws governing cross-border child abduction investigations.
Mr Anjum, who is in his late twenties, is serving his fourth consecutive prison sentence in the UK after defying successive court orders to reveal his daughter's whereabouts. She was last seen by her mother in November 2009, when Mr Anjum, a former insurance salesman, took her from her home in Ashton-under-Lyme in Greater Manchester, saying they were going to Southport. Instead, he boarded a plane to Lahore with Atiya and told Ms Wilkinson in a text message that she was "never going to see her daughter again".
Greater Manchester Police confirmed that she had been recovered early this morning. Last month police released an e-fit image of what Atiya could look like three years after her abduction. It is understood that the image, along with the intervention of senior Pakistani officials, led to new information being handed to Pakistani authorities, which led them to house in the city Sialkot, where members of Mr Anjum's extended family were living. Police monitored the address for several days before informing the residents that Atiya must be returned to the UK. It is understood that the family cooperated fully with authorities. Atiya boarded a plane home this morning. She is understood to be in good health and to give all appearance of being well-looked after during her three year absence.
Speaking ahead of her daughter's sixth birthday last month, Ms Wilkinson said that she did not know whether her daughter was alive or dead. "It's been an absolute nightmare," she said. "We've had no contact. I'm worrying every day, every single day. Everything is affected by it. When I close my eyes I see her."
Joanne Orton, advice line coordinator at reunite, the leading UK charity specialising in international parental child abduction and the movement of children across international borders, said that Atiya would suffer "lifelong effects" from her abduction.
"Once Atiya and her mum are reunited they have to form a whole new relationship again," she said. "We don't know at this point if Atiya speaks English, we don't know what she remembers of her mum, what she remembers of England even. Her last three formative years have been based in Pakistan with a Pakistani culture, Pakistani language. Now she has come back, it will be a whole new learning curve for her and a whole new group of relationships that she's going to have to form."
Sajjad Karim, MEP for North West England, said that Pakistani authorities had been "absolutely crucial" in resolving the case, but only acted after he personally raised the case with Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar during a visit to the European Parliament.
Efforts by Greater Manchester Police to investigate the case were hampered because Pakistan is not a signatory of the Hague Convention, by which countries agree to respect custody rulings made in each other's family courts.
"It wasn't possible to deal with it as a criminal investigation and therefore [the UK police] had to follow other family law avenues," Mr Karim told the BBC. "That of course had its own limitations in terms of seeking cooperation from third countries. Therefore it was essential that we had political involvement. There's nothing that I've done today that couldn't have been done three and a half years ago…we must sit down and look at putting in place relevant protocols to ensure that measures that are available to us outside of purely legal avenues are explored right at the outset in such cases."
The number of child abduction cases in the UK has increased dramatically in recent years. In 2011, reunite dealt with 512 new cases, the vast majority of them involving children being taken overseas.
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