[Note: It may be relevant that the child was not actually in Japan - the actual return happened earlier, when a US order was enforced, and only because the mother came to Hawaii and was arrested there on federal child abduction charges. That has historically been the only way to undo abductions to Japan and other countries that view child custody and enforcement extremely differently from English-speaking countries.]
The Osaka High Court has awarded a 40-year-old Nicaraguan man living in the United States custody of his daughter, following his divorce from the girl's Japanese mother who abducted her to Osaka ... ruling the 9-year-old girl had become accustomed to life in the United States with her father and his family. ... the daughter has already been handed over to her father in the U.S.
The couple married in 2002 and the child was born the same year. They lived in Wisconsin, but the woman returned to Japan with the child in 2008 without her then-estranged husband's permission.
The man was granted custody of the child in a U.S. suit over the couple's divorce. The woman was arrested by U.S. authorities in April last year when she visited Hawaii to renew her green card. She was released in December the same year after relinquishing the girl to her father.
From "Osaka High Court grants custody of kid abducted to Japan to father in U.S."
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