Police raid home in search of sisters
Police have raided the rural property of a grandmother in Victoria, in search of four missing sisters who are on the run from authorirties.
The children have been in hiding for three days after disappearing to avoid being deported back to Italy to live with their allegedly abusive father.
The four girls, aged between nine and 14, were not found by the six officers.
The Federal Court of Australia has ordered the grandmother to disclose the whereabouts of the Queensland girls by Friday.
The great-grandmother of four sisters at the centre of a bitter international custody dispute says she would rather end up in jail than reveal their whereabouts.
A Brisbane judge on Wednesday ordered the girls' grandmother, great-grandmother and aunt to attend court on Friday to answer questions under oath about where the girls are hiding.
The girls disappeared earlier this week to avoid being returned to Italy to live with their father.
Their great-grandmother, who is hiding them, says no-one knows where she and the children are and she would not front court on Friday.
"If the judge throws me in jail, I'll live with it," she told the Seven Network.
"I have no respect whatsoever for the justice system.
"I am not going to leave these children alone for one second until I'm sure that they're safely with their mother."
The children were in "good spirits" and safe, she said.
The order that they return to Europe was made by a Family Court judge last year.
The judge ruled the mother had brought the girls, aged nine, 10, 13 and 14, to Australia without the father's permission and they must be returned for the custody dispute to be dealt with in the Italian courts.
However, the court heard on Wednesday that the mother had breached the judge's further order that she surrender the children into the father's care at Brisbane Airport at midnight on Tuesday.
The judge said the mother's "non-compliance with court orders and continued subterfuge about the whereabouts of the children" were the primary reasons behind him refusing to hear her last-ditch attempt to prevent them being sent back to Italy.
However, he did not rule out hearing the matter at a future date once the children are found.
