Husband flies out to love tug mother

Sarra Fotheringham, the British mother held in Dubai for trying to smuggle her 10-year-old son home to England, was due to have an emotional reunion with her husband Neil today.

He was flying out to the Gulf emirate after Mrs Fotheringham, 34, was released on bail after being charged with kidnapping son Tariq, who had been living in Dubai with his natural father, billionaire Rashid Al Habtoor.

Before he left the couple's spacious detached home, Mr Fotheringham, a keen photographer, opened the family album for the Evening Standard and This is London. The photographs tell a story of happy family life, tinged with the sadness of separation from Tariq. It is a story Mrs Fotheringham herself has told in all its painful detail in conversations with the Standard and others.

"Fighting for Tariq has become a way of life for us," she said.

"All we want is to be reunited as a family again," Mr Fotheringham, 32, a police constable, said before leaving the couple's home in Camberley, Surrey. "Tariq is my adopted son and he means as much to me as our other three children."

Close to tears, he added: "We have been through hell over this."

News of Mrs Fotheringham's release from a sweltering, bare cell in Dubai's Port Rashid area came in a telephone call late yesterday. Mr Fotheringham broke down with relief as his wife told him she was being released from custody on condition that she surrendered her passport and found guarantors to ensure that she appears in court to answer the kidnapping charge. She faces a maximum of three years in jail or a substantial fine.

Mrs Fotheringham was a 23-year-old stewardess with the Emirates airline, based in Dubai, when she met Mr Al Habtoor. He was 24, the son of a vastly wealthy and influential merchant family. As their relationship grew she was drawn into a world of glittering parties, candle-lit dinners and polo - Mr Al Habtoor's obsession. "We were two young people having fun," she said. But after three months she discovered she was pregnant and, according to her, he became a different person.

"He said I was just another scheming westerner. He was very abusive."

Six months into the pregnancy she flew home to England and Tariq was born here. She met Neil Fotheringham, they married and in 1995 he became Tariq's adoptive father.

"Neil took Tariq aside to explain that he was special and had two daddies, because we didn't want people making comments about him - he has different colouring from the rest of the family." Then, unexpectedly, Rashid Al Habtoor made contact and said he would like to meet his son. By then he had married an Arab woman and had started a family of his own. Mrs Fotheringham said: "There was no reason for me to perceive any threat. As far as I was concerned Tariq was adopted, we were a family and nothing could change that."

At the suggestion of Mr Al Habtoor's family the Fotheringhams rented out their Surrey home and moved to Dubai, to try a new life in which Tariq would for the first time have contact with his natural father. The wealthy Al Habtoors promised a fine house and a job for Neil. Mrs Fotheringham was keen on the idea: "We thought if it didn't work out we could just come back."

Soon after they arrived in Dubai, tension set in. There were clashes over where Tariq should spend most of his time. It became clear the Al Habtoors wanted him for themselves.

"I'm sure they were saying things to try to turn him against us," she said. "Looking back it sounds crazy, but at the time I steadfastly believed that if we could only get home British justice would sort it out."

But when the family made plans to return home, Rashid Al Habtoor's family made it clear they would not allow Tariq to leave. "Rashid informed us Tariq was now his. We were devastated. We couldn't seize him because he was too heavily guarded and the embassy told us there was nothing we could do over there."

By now Mrs Fotheringham was six months pregnant with her fourth child, Charlie, now aged one. The couple decided to return to England with their two other children Cameron, now seven and Annabel, four. After legal battles in the High Court and Court of Appeal to get Tariq home they were finally told that British law could not intervene.

She said: "Tariq knows I am fighting for him."