A Melbourne mum has won an almost three-year legal battle to remove a travel ban preventing her daughter from leaving Egypt and returning home.
Amaal Yasmin Finn, 37, has been campaigning bring her seven-year-old daughter Zareen home after ex-husband, Mazen Hassan Baioumy, imposed a travel ban that prevented Zareen from leaving.
The travel ban had been in force since 2013. Finn said she had been tricked by Baioumy into signing the documents as they were in Arabic, a language she cannot read.
Finn was under the impression the documents would grant her Egyptian residency.
After almost three years of petitioning the Australian Government, an online campaign that saw over 47, 000 signatories and pleas with the department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, release came in an Egyptian court.
The verdict was handed down on February 24th but it took an additional month before Ms Finn and her daughter could return home.
Speaking to news.com.au, Ms Finn said the lifting of the ban came as an unexpected relief.
“At the very least I was expecting another [court] session after a month, but [the lawyer] said; ‘that’s it – it’s been lifted’, and I couldn’t believe it. It was a huge relief,” she said.
Mr Baioumy tried to intervene by having the ban reimposed but the bid was rejected.
In 2014, Ms Finn told news.com.au the case had cost her family almost $100, 000.
Click below to watch Ms. Finn tell her heartbreaking story to Sixty Minutes.