Positivity: Kidnapped Daughter Finds Father after 26 Years

A horrible story that began in Bangladesh comes to a happy end, and a new beginning (HT Good News Blog):

Dad and daughter reunited after 26 years
August 25, 2006 07:07pm

A DUTCH lawyer who was trafficked to Europe as a baby has been reunited with her impoverished Bangladeshi father 26 years after he last saw her, a report said today.

Matiur Rahman last saw his daughter Rina in 1979 when she was six months old, according to the Daily Star newspaper, which identified her only by her first name.

The following year Rahman was kidnapped by criminals who he believed belonged to a gang of traffickers.

After escaping from his kidnappers, he went to find his wife and daughter, only to be told by neighbours that his wife had sold the girl.

Years of fruitless searching followed until earlier this year, when he read a newspaper report about a Dutch woman who had returned to Bangladesh with her husband and was looking for him.

“Allah has finally heard my prayers,” the report quoted him as saying.

“I am the happiest man in the world now. My heart was in flames for so many years and now it is over,” he said.

Rina was brought up by a Dutch couple and trained as a lawyer in Holland.

She described finding her father with the help of a local non-governmental organisation as “strange, marvellous” and “above everything,” the report said.

Rahman, who was once a rickshaw puller, works at a hospital in Dhaka.

Rina said she planned to return to Bangladesh to visit her father again soon.

The report said she was attempting to trace her half-sister who she believed was also trafficked to Holland.