RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – The Brazilian Supreme Court’s top judge delayed until today a ruling on whether a 9-year-old boy at the centre of an international custody battle will be reunited with his father and return to the United States.

A ruling in the case of Sean Goldman, whose father David Goldman is an American and whose mother Bruna Bianchi was a Brazilian who died last year, had been expected yesterday. But a spokesman for Chief Justice Gilmar Mendes told Reuters late yesterday the ruling would be announced the following day.

The Goldman case has reached the highest levels of both governments and threatened to mar Brazil-US relations. Bianchi took Sean from the United States to her native Brazil in 2004, then divorced Goldman and stayed with the boy in the South American country, in what the Goldman and the US government call a clear case of international child abduction.

Since Bianchi’s death, her family and second husband have fought to keep Sean in Brazil, saying he has settled in the country and does not want to go back the the United States.

Last Thursday another Supreme Court judge blocked a decision by a federal court earlier in the week ordering the return of the boy to US authorities within 48 hours.

The father, who has only seen Sean in brief visits to Brazil since 2004, and Brazil’s attorney general appealed that ruling, asking for Sean to be handed over immediately.