Runaway teenager weds lover in Egypt

[leobold1]

Runaway teenager weds lover in Egypt - Telegraph

By Richard Edwards
Last Updated: 2:58am GMT 06/12/2007


Amy Robson, 17: 'I know I have made the right decision'

A runaway schoolgirl has married her Egyptian lover after spending nine weeks searching for him in a holiday resort.

Amy Robson, 17, fled from her family home near Carlisle in September in pursuit of a 29-year-old man she met in an internet café whom she called "Noby".

She was "heartbroken" to find he had disappeared but remained in the diving resort of Hurghada and was determined to find him. The pair were reunited last week and married privately, with a lawyer present. They now plan to live together near Cairo.

Miss Robson said yesterday that Noby was "the best man I've ever met", but admitted that her parents would not be happy.

She had yet to break the news to them when she told The Daily Telegraph yesterday: "Everything is OK now. I don't need to cry another tear or feel depressed. I feel so happy. I wish my parents could understand. They think he is not a good man but really he is the best man I've ever met.

"He is the first man in my life. He is so special to me and I could never love another man like I love Noby.

"I know I have made the right decision."

Noby, whose real name is Mohammed El Sayed, said he had risked arrest to be with her. When they first met he was detained on suspicion of kidnap.

He said: "I am so happy to have found Amy. We will spend the rest of our lives together."

The wedding capped an extraordinary year for the sixth-form art college student from the village of Beaumont.

She caused an international police hunt after fleeing to Egypt at Easter to find a boathand she had met on a family holiday three years previously. Before she tracked him down she ran into Mr El Sayed at an internet café.

"It was love at first sight," she said and within a day they had decided to marry.

"I just felt it was the right decision. We both felt the same way. I just really liked him, I couldn't explain why. He was better than English boys."

However, when her parents, James, 42, and Janet, 33, reported her missing, an international alert was put out and Mr El Sayed was sent to jail.

Miss Robson was brought home by her parents but five months later she was drawn back to Egypt, despite not being in contact with her boyfriend.

On Sept 28, she had breakfast with her mother and father and said goodbye as normal, pretending she was going to college.

She then caught a train to London and bought an £800 one-way air ticket to Hurghada. She had saved money for the trip from a £30-a-week Government scheme designed to encourage teenagers to go to sixth form.

Miss Robson returned to the internet café and, after being told that Mr El Sayed had moved out, survived through a series of temporary jobs around the resort.

She kept in contact with her parents, who said they would buy her a ticket home but decided not to travel to Egypt again and to give her "space".