A US-Brazilian boy at the center of a long custody row entered the US consulate in Rio de Janeiro early Thursday to be handed over to his US father waiting inside, impatient for the Christmas Eve reunion.
Sean Goldman, 9, walked by foot into the diplomatic property with members of his Brazilian family who were forced to give him up to father David Goldman under an order by Brazil's supreme court handed down this week.
Around 60 journalists waiting at the front of the consulate ran towards the boy en masse, surprising him.
He did not say anything, though by way of message he was wearing a Brazilian football jersey.
Thirty-five police officers were deployed around the consulate to keep order.
His Brazilian grandmother accompanying him, Silvana Bianchi, bitterly said "Merry Christmas, Gilmar Mendes," in reference to the chief justice of the supreme court who gave the order for Sean's handover.
The boy and his father were to leave almost immediately on a special plane made available by the US government that was already waiting, Brazilian media reported.
The lawyer for the Brazilian family, Sergio Tostes, told Brazilian radio station CBN early Thursday, as Sean was leaving the Rio home where he spent the past few years, that he had tried to get Silvana Bianchi on the plane to facilitate the boy's transition.
But the US government rejected the request "and the Brazilian government accepted that ban," he said.
The handover capped a five-year legal battle by David Goldman to regain custody of his son.
During that time he had been locked in dispute with the Brazilian family of his ex-wife Bruna Bianchi, who died in childbirth last year.
Justice Mendes ended that ordeal on Tuesday when he struck down a final appeal by the family and upheld a decision by a lower court in Rio awarding custody to Goldman.
That lower court set a deadline of 9:00 am (1100 GMT) on Thursday for Sean to be presented at the consulate. The boy turned up 20 minutes before that limit expired.
Sean was born in the United States in 2000 with dual US-Brazilian nationality to Goldman, a former male model, and Bianchi, a fashion designer originally from Rio.
In 2004, Bianchi went to Brazil with Sean for what she said would be a two-week vacation, but she ended up staying there, divorcing Goldman and marrying Joao Paulo Lins e Silva, a prominent lawyer.
She died last year while giving birth to a daughter.
Lins e Silva used legal procedures to block Goldman's efforts to regain custody of Sean, arguing the boy was so integrated into Brazilian life that sending him to the United States would be harmful.
He also said Sean himself wanted to stay in Brazil.
The issue became a irritant in US-Brazil relations, with officials from both countries concerned that a Hague Convention governing international child abduction cases was not being observed.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressed her Brazilian counterpart on Sean Goldman earlier this year, while the US Congress demanded an end to his "kidnapping."
Sean's Brazilian family decried those moves as "improper interference" and claimed it was acting only to defend the boy's best interests.
Copyright 2009  AFP American Edition
