Spanish woman and Egyptian girlfriend forced to flee Dubai 'safe in Istanbul', says embassy

María Jimena, 28 – who is Argentinian but has had a Spanish passport since early childhood – contacted her mother Ramona Teresa in Torrox (Málaga) to say she and partner Shaza Ismail were safe.

They had gone to the UAE, where Shaza's family now lives, after being summoned because Shaza's mother was 'seriously ill'.

When they got there, they found this was just a ploy to get Shaza into the country so her parents could have her arrested, and that in fact her mother was in perfect health.

The two young women, who live in London, managed to escape to the former Soviet State of Georgia to stay with friends they have there and arrange a flight back to the UK, but Shaza's father caught up with them, issued death threats and tried to kidnap his daughter, as well as tearing up the couple's passports and visas.

All three were arrested, but later released.

Without passports, they could not return to London safely, so they arranged to get to the Turkish border and sneak through unnoticed.

They managed after several failed attempts and caught a bus to the town of Samsun on Sunday, where María Jimena called her mother.

She told her, “if you haven't heard from me by the middle of Monday, call the police because it means something bad will have happened.”

María Jimena told her mum the couple had booked a hotel in Istanbul where they intended to catch a coach, and that once there, they would go to the Spanish embassy for help.

But when they did not reach the hotel, Ramona contacted both the Argentinian and Spanish embassies who, after three days of working closely with Turkish police, failed to find the girls.

Late last night (Thursday), however, Spanish ambassador in Turkey Rafael Mendívil Peydro told Ramona that her daughter and daughter-in-law were both safe.

María Jimena and Shaza were arrested in Samsun before they managed to get the coach to Istanbul, but were later taken by authorities to the Euro-Asian city.

They are being held in an illegal immigration centre for foreigners due to be deported – but this is a positive step as the girls do, in fact, want to be deported.

“It's been a confusing situation; they disappeared off the radar for three days,” Mendívil Peydro says.

“But they're now safe in the detention centre in Istanbul and waiting to be deported to London.

“They had to contact us because they have no passports.”