A Derry woman yesterday returned home from Rome with her seven-month-old baby, who had been taken abroad by her estranged Italian husband.
Ms Letitia Paradisio, speaking shortly after she had returned to Derry with her son, Joshua, said: "I am just so happy to have my baby back home. All of my prayers and all of everybody else's prayers have been answered."
Ms Paradisio returned home one week after she and her two brothers, Brian and Owen Deehan, had gone to Rome to bring back her son, who was with the family of her husband, Nikola.
She claimed her estranged husband had duped her into going with him to Rome last September with their child and that when they arrived in Italy he told her to go home.
After she had taken her son from her husband's mother on Wednesday morning, Ms Para disio and her two brothers drove from Rome to Nice airport.
There they were arrested by the French police on foot of a warrant from the Italian authorities which alleged that they had caused criminal damage to a door in her husband's house.
However, they were all released late on Wednesday night without charge. Meanwhile, MEP Ms Mary Banotti, the European Parliament's mediator in child abduction, who had been contacted by Ms Paradisio's family in Derry, said she hoped the baby's parents would come to an agreement over the custody of their child.