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July 3rd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Australian lawyer Melinda Taylor has been reunited with her family in the Netherlands after being freed from detention in Libya.
Foreign Minister Bob Carr said on Tuesday that Ms Taylor’s release after almost a month in custody in the Libyan city of Zintan was “heart-warming news”.
“I’m especially thinking of the reception Melinda’s going to get from a two-year old who’ll be seeing her mother for the first time in three weeks,” Senator Carr told AAP from New York.
Senator Carr said he had not spoken to Ms Taylor – who touched down in Rotterdam around 1am on Tuesday local time (0900 AEST) – but had spoken with her family.
“The parents are elated, very relieved, and her husband Geoff is very happy.”
Her mother Janelle Taylor told ABC Radio, “She sounded good, she sounded really good, really excited to be going home. She just said, ‘I love you mum and dad. I’m on my way home.’.”
Ms Taylor travelled to The Hague to be reunited with her husband and daughter Yasmina later on Tuesday.
She was one of four International Criminal Court (ICC) officials detained on June 7 while helping to prepare the legal defence of Saif al-Islam, the son of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
Ms Taylor was accused of carrying a pen camera and attempting to give Saif a coded letter from his former right-hand man, Mohammed Ismail, one of Libya’s most wanted men.
The detention – despite the legal team’s diplomatic immunity – sparked weeks of intensive negotiations between Australia, Libya and the ICC.
Senator Carr even took the extraordinary step of travelling to Tripoli to press Ms Taylor’s case with the Libyan government.
He said it was “hard to tell” how much impact his personal intervention had.
“I’d like to think that we made the Libyans very aware that the world was watching and cared for the welfare of the detainees,” he said.
“We helped the ICC and the Libyan government to start talking. That seemed to eliminate the areas of misunderstanding.”
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott called Ms Taylor’s release a “happy outcome”.
“I think that the foreign minister has been assiduous in working for this release,” he told reporters in Darwin.
But opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop questioned Senator Carr’s methods.
“I was concerned by the unorthodox approach,” she told Sky News.
Coalition frontbencher George Brandis said he did not think Senator Carr’s intervention was decisive.
“I rather suspect that the professional officers in the Australian embassy were decisive in their interventions,” he told Sky News.
Senator Carr praised Australian ambassador David Ritchie, the government’s lead negotiator.
Asked if he believed Ms Taylor had done anything wrong, Senator Carr said, “I’ve never said she’s done anything wrong.
“All I’ve said and continue to say is the ICC is duty bound to see that when its staff are sent into extremely fraught circumstances, it’s in the context of an agreed protocol that ensures there’ll be minimal misunderstanding.”
ICC president Sang-Hyun Song signalled Ms Taylor’s release may not be the end of the matter.
“There will be an investigation following the return of (the) members to The Hague,” he said.
“Any member found with any misconduct will face appropriate sanction.”
The three other ICC staff detained with Ms Taylor, and released at the same time, were from Spain, Lebanon and Russia.
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