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Two mi­nor chil­dren who were pre­vi­ous­ly held in an or­phan­age in north­east Syr­ia have law­ful­ly ar­rived in Trinidad and To­ba­go, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued by at­tor­ney Criston J. Williams of Quan­tum Le­gal. Their ar­rival was fa­cil­i­tat­ed un­der a guardian­ship or­der is­sued by the High Court of Eng­land and Wales, with the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go (GoRTT) for­mal­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the pro­ceed­ings and ac­cept­ing ju­ris­dic­tion for their cit­i­zen­ship ap­pli­ca­tions.

The chil­dren’s repa­tri­a­tion fol­lows years of ap­peals by their rel­a­tives and com­plex le­gal process­es ini­ti­at­ed af­ter UK au­thor­i­ties in­ter­vened in April 2022. De­spite re­quests for as­sis­tance dat­ing back to 2019, the fam­i­ly re­ceived no sup­port from Trinida­di­an of­fi­cials un­til the UK gov­ern­ment stepped in, the state­ment not­ed.

Quan­tum Le­gal em­pha­sized that the High Court in Eng­land im­posed re­port­ing re­stric­tions to pro­tect the chil­dren’s pri­va­cy, pro­hibit­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of any in­for­ma­tion that could di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly re­veal their iden­ti­ties. The fam­i­ly is ap­peal­ing to the me­dia and the pub­lic to ob­serve these re­stric­tions to safe­guard the emo­tion­al well­be­ing and safe­ty of the mi­nors.