Last updated 7.05 p.m: A mother who was jailed for three months after being found guilty of withholding access to her husband for their son was set free this evening after the granting of a presidential pardon, and told reporters she is trying to forgive for what had happened to her.
The woman was released after President George Abela signed a decree granting her a pardon. He also had a meeting with her son.
The woman said she still could not believe what she had been through and she could not wait to return home.
She said she is trying to forgive whoever had landed her in prison.
She thanked a particular prison warder for being a pillar of strength and said that her appeal to the authorities and the courts was to listen to the children in cases such as this - whatever their age.
She also thanked the Maltese people and the media for helping her.
The Cabinet recommended the presidential pardon after discussing it at this morning's meeting.
The Attorney General last week advised the government to recommend the pardon.
The government said it took the decision after considering the circumstances of the case. This was the first Cabinet meeting after the woman was jailed.
She had argued when the case was heard in the lower court and on appeal that she had not stopped her son, then 16, from seeing his father, but he adamantly refused to do so.
In her appeal, the woman argued that the Magistrates' court had not made a distinction between a five-year-old and a 16-year-old who was in sixth form and wished to continue studying instead of seeing his father, with whom he did not have good relations.
The Appeals Court said that the court could not exclude that the woman was using every occasion and excuse for the son not to see him.
During the proceedings the father had complained about the wife not giving him access to his son, in one case for six months. The woman said he had sometimes kept his son for longer than agreed.
The boy, who is now almost 18, told The Sunday Times that his mother never told him not to visit his father. He felt his mother did not deserve to be given the harshest punishment allowed by law in such cases.
His father, also a teacher, disagreed, telling The Times that his ex-wife deserved what she got as she kept refusing him access to his son out of revenge.
Speaking to The Times the woman said: “I never poisoned my son against his father – I didn’t say good things but neither did I say anything bad.”