A desperate mother’s hopes of being reunited with her daughters are in tatters after they dropped off the radar in Libya.
Tanya Borg, 39, had her world tipped upside-down in 2015 when her estranged husband fled to his north African homeland with their two young children.
Mohammed El Zubaidy, 41, took Angel, 19, and her eight-year-old sister to Tripoli where he left them to live with their grandmother because he disapproved of their Western lifestyle in Pewsey, Wiltshire.
Despite a gruelling court battle – both at home and abroad – to bring them back to Britain, Ms Borg has been unsuccessful.
She took action in the High Court to force El Zubaidy, of Wood Green, north London, to retrieve their daughters from Libya.
When he returned to England, he was jailed but after his release in November has claimed he has no idea where the children are.
Earlier this year Ms Borg also took legal action in Libya after travelling to Tripoli, where she saw her children briefly during her visit.
But her lawyer says they disappeared after a Libyan judge ordered their grandmother to produce them at a court hearing and their whereabouts are now unknown.
Tanya Borg, 39, had her world tipped upside-down in 2015 when her estranged husband Mohammed El Zubaidy fled to his north African homeland with their two young children
Ms Borg, who was born in Malta and met El Zubaidy two decades ago, says she is heartbroken and not sure what to do next.
She said: ‘I’m pretty much back to square one. It’s very complicated.
‘I’m not sure what I can do next. I’m talking to my lawyers.’
She added: ‘Their father is in control. He has all the power. He could get them back. I beg him to get them home.’
Lawyer Pam Sanghera, who represents Ms Borg and is based at Charles Strachan Solicitors, said mother and daughters were briefly reunited earlier this year in Libya.
But she said Ms Borg’s daughters vanished after a Libyan judge ordered their grandmother to produce them.
Ms Sanghera said: ‘The grandmother failed to produce the children at court and since then, has not been contactable and has left her family home.
‘The children’s whereabouts in Libya are therefore unknown to their mother.
‘She has made extensive inquiries in Libya to track down her children to no avail.’
Ms Borg first met El Zubaidy when she was 18 in Malta, where the pair were living and working. She is half-Maltese on her father’s side. They were married in 2000.
Ms Borg, who chose not to take her husband’s surname, said when the siblings were younger, El Zubaidy was far from a hands-on father.
She also added that, despite being Muslim, he was never devout and did not pray or go to any local mosque.
But as the children got older he became increasingly keen for them to live according to Islamic cultural traditions, she said.
In 2012, El Zubaidy took the three siblings to Libya to see his dying father, leaving Ms Borg behind. Then, in a chilling warning of what was to come, he issued an unexpected threat to their mother that he would not bring them home unless they began attending an Islamic school at the weekends.
Ms Borg was not in favour of this form of education, but agreed to the demand for fear he might carry out this terrifying threat.
On his return, El Zubaidy became particularly strict with their eldest daughter, who had now become a teenager.
Ms Borg told the Mail on Sunday: ‘He wouldn’t let her go to a sleepover when she was at an age when she wanted to be with her girlfriends and have a laugh.
‘He banned her from speaking to boys. She started an Instagram account, but he made her delete everything. She would come down with a strappy top and he’d make her go and get changed.
‘He’d say, “You want her dressing like a slut.” She would want to sit in her room listening to music, but he wouldn’t let her have a bit of privacy. I believe he didn’t want her to live a Western lifestyle.’
In contrast, her younger brother was allowed much more freedom and could sit in his room playing computer games.
Despite the increased levels of control being exerted by El Zubaidy, life for the family settled down for some years.
That is until February 2015, when he announced that he wanted to take the children abroad to see his mother, who was apparently staying in Tunisia. As a pre-school teacher, Ms Borg was again forced to remain behind due to her work commitments.
However, without his wife knowing, when El Zubaidy arrived in Tunisia he immediately took his children on the treacherous journey across the border to Libya. Ms Borg then got the phone call that would cause her world to fall apart.
‘I was frantic waiting to hear they had arrived safely and then when Mohammed finally called, he said, “I’m in Libya at my mum’s.”
‘I knew as soon as he said he was in Libya that he wasn’t bringing the children back.’
In 2016, Ms Borg managed to get her husband to come back to Britain with their son by making a false promise that she would sign over custody of all three children to him.
She then took the opportunity to obtain a High Court order for him to return her daughters, which El Zubaidy made little effort to comply with – leading him to be given two consecutive jail terms within the last nine months.
Ms Borg has had no contact with her daughters since March 2017, when she had a brief conversation with her eldest, telling her how desperately she missed her.
The mother-of-three has made numerous requests to the Foreign Office for assistance to get the girls out of Libya.
But the British Embassy in Libya closed in 2015 as the country descended into civil war and saw an expansion from IS following the downfall of the country’s long-time leader, Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.