Calendar Egypt

A woman from Hull has been jailed for three years for smuggling drugs into Egypt.

Shop worker Laura Plummer, 33, was arrested after she was found to be carrying 290 tramadol tablets in her suitcase, a painkiller which is legal in the UK but which is banned in Egypt.

Ms Plummer's family, who have described her as "naive", said she was taking the tablets for her Egyptian partner Omar Caboo, who suffers from severe back pain.

Her mother Roberta Sinclair had travelled to Egypt for the Boxing Day hearing which had been adjourned from Christmas Day because Laura was too upset.

Her sister Rachel Plummer said her family was " devastated " by the sentence. Her family said her lawyers have lodged an immediate appeal..

The family of the Hull woman locked up in an Egyptian jail for taking painkillers into the country have had their hopes that the president would intervene in her case dashed.

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has said he will "not interfere" in the case of Laura Plummer was arrested for taking strips of Tramadol into the country for her boyfriend's sore back.

He added that his country had a "just, fair and independent judiciary system."

Holidaymakers stranded in Sharm el-Sheik will start to return home today, including a flight to Doncaster airport.

It comes after flights between the popular Egyptian holiday resort and the UK were suspended by the government, amid fears that a bomb may have been behind the downing of a Russian passenger jet last week.

Thomson flight TOM363 is due to arrive into the airport shortly after 11pm on Friday night. The flight will not be permitted to carry any hold luggage at all - including large medical items. Instead, passengers will only be allowed to take on one small piece of hand luggage, while larger items will be securely shipped separately via government couriers.

A judge has told a mother from Leeds he can do no more to punish her former husband who is accused of taking their six year old daughter.

Elsa Salama was taken from her mother while on holiday in Egypt two years ago. Her father Tamer has already served a prison sentence for refusing to reveal where she is, but he has now been released.

Naomi Button from Bramley, has fought hard to find her daughter. But now she's been told there appears to be very little hope of them being re-united. Kate Walby reports.

An 'unimaginably cruel' father, accused of arranging the disappearance of his four-year-old daughter during a holiday to Egypt, has kicked sand in the face of the English legal system after a top judge ruled there was nothing more he could do to punish him.

Little Elsa Salama's mother, Naomi Button, from Bramley, Leeds, has not seen her for more than two years since she disappeared from an Egyptian hotel in December 2011.

The desperate mum caims it was her ex-husband, Tamer Salama, who engineered their separation.Since then, Mr Salama, a teacher from Southampton, has refused point blank to comply with family court orders requiring him to disclose Elsa's whereabouts and to arrange her return to Britain.

He has served two years continuously in prison for his repeated contempts of court.

Last month, his ex-wife's lawyers asked the courts to give him another 12-month prison sentence in the hope that he would 'at last crack' and admit defeat in his war of attrition with the English family courts.

But Mr Justice Holman ruled that, faced with Mr Salama's 'absolute determination' to keep his now six-year-old daughter's location secret, nothing more could be done to force him to break his silence.

Mr Justice Holman said that the power of the courts to punish him had run its course. Parliament had laid down a 'surprisingly short' maximum two-year sentence for contempt and, having been handed a series of consecutive jail terms, he had effectively already served double that.

Although his contempts of court were 'flagrant', he was not guilty of any crime and it was clear that a further spell in prison, however long, was unlikely to persaude him to comply with court orders.

The judge said: "The reality of this case is that, from day one, this father has manifested an absolute determination not, under pressure of court orders, to reveal the whereabouts of his child and not to cause her return to England.

"So far as the coercive purpose of any sentence is concerned, I am afraid it is my clear view that this man has an absolute determination, at any rate while he remains in prison, not to obey the orders of this court, and that the coercive force of any sentences of imprisonment is now spent.

"If I were to commit him to prison for a further term, the realistic purpose would be solely to punish him, which...I cannot lawfully further do"

"For those reasons, it would not now be proportionate or justifiable, nor, therefore, lawful to commit this father to a yet further term of imprisonment.

"I make plain that I have the utmost sympathy for the mother in her situation and the utmost concern as to the welfare and wellbeing of Elsa, who has now not seen either of her parents for two whole long years..."

Following the breakdown of the former couple's marriage in 2009, Mrs Button had agreed to take Elsa, then aged just four, to Egypt over Christmas 2011 so that she could get to know her paternal family.

She had paid the air fares for all three of them

.But the judge added: "It is a fact that Elsa has never returned to England since that supposed short holiday period.

"It is the mother's case that, whilst they were there and staying in an hotel, the father brought it about that Elsa was detached from her and moved to live, apparently, with the father's own mother".

Both Mrs Button, who was born and raised in Britain, and her ex-husband, who became a British citizen in 2010, returned to the UK shortly afterwards and neither had seen Elsa since.

An Egyptian businessman who a High Court judge says has "wrongfully retained" his two year-old Dewsbury son in Egypt for 10 months has been told to "come to his senses".

Mr Justice Roderic Wood says Abdelaziz Antar has kept Omar Antar in Egypt since late December in breach of court orders.

He says he hopes that publicity of allowing the boy to be named will pressurise Mr Antar into returning him to the care of his British mother Aisha Qureshi in Dewsbury.

Omar was born in 2011. His father worked abroad, visiting him at six month intervals.

Ms Qureshi and Omar had visited Egypt for a wedding in November. She had been forced to return to England and Mr Antar had refused to allow his son to leave, the judge heard.

A mother from Leeds is pleading to the kidnappers of her daughter to bring her back home.

Naomi Button took Elsa, who'll be six next month, to visit her ex-husband's Egyptian family when the child was snatched by her father.

Tamer Salama is currently in jail in the UK because he refuses to reveal where he has hidden her. His term was recently increased by an additional year because of his failure to comply with court orders to return his daughter to the UK.

Elsa has not be seen since December 2011.