Sydney: The Australian Federal Police are appealing for help to track down a 4-year-old New Zealand girl believed to be have been taken across the Tasman by her mother in defiance of a court order.

Rebekah Jayne Stewart has been missing since March 2003, when former New Zealand policewoman Roanne Jill Stewart is believed to have brought her to Australia.

Rebekah’s father, Steven Petty (44), is seeking his daughter’s return to Auckland under the United Nations Hague Convention which facilitates the return of children who are abducted from their home countries.

The Stewart case hit the headlines last year when it emerged Roanne Stewart had allegedly spirited her daughter out of New Zealand in what Family Court Judge Jan Doogue described as a “clinical and calculated exercise”.