Abduction of Eya, 10 years old: the girl found, the father and his accomplice arrested in Denmark

Eya, 10, brutally kidnapped Thursday in Isère by her father and an accomplice, was found this Friday in Denmark, where her captors were arrested after the issuance of a European arrest warrant. “Eya’s mother was able to reach her daughter by telephone via the Danish consulate. The girl is doing as well as possible after such events “, said in a press release this Friday evening the prosecutor of Grenoble Eric Vaillant.

A little earlier, the magistrate had announced at the end of the afternoon that the girl had been found in Denmark with her father and his accomplice. This outcome comes after 36 hours of anguish for the girl’s mother, present at the time of her violent kidnapping on Thursday morning.

Eya, educated in CM2, was kidnapped around 8:15 a.m. while she was walking with her mother in the street to get to her school in Fontaine, a suburb of Grenoble. According to the prosecution, the father “and a hooded accomplice” “gassed the little girl’s mother with tear gas” before seizing the child.

Before the arrest of the suspects, the Grenoble prosecutor had indicated that the elements in the possession of the investigators suggested that the father, his accomplice and the child had gone abroad. He mentioned as “possible destinations” Sweden and Tunisia, countries corresponding to the dual nationality of the father, aged 53.

Judicial information was opened in the afternoon, in particular for “aggravated violence” on the mother of the child as well as “abduction by ascendant” and complicity, and arrest warrants were issued and “disseminated in the framework of a European arrest warrant”, according to the prosecution. The latter had lifted the kidnapping alert in the morning after the judicial police had received around 70 messages.

The 33-year-old mother told Dauphiné Libéré on Thursday that she was walking with her daughter when they were suddenly blocked by a vehicle, inside which she said she recognized the father of the child.

“The father is suspected of having been violent with the mother in the past”

As the driver sprayed her with tear gas, her “ex-husband grabbed (the child) by the hair and forced her into the back seat with him,” she said. saying they fear he will take her abroad.

An agent of the social center in front of which the facts took place tried to intervene, in vain, indicated the mayor of this commune of 23,000 inhabitants, Franck Longo. The photos of the girl and the father as well as her identity had been released with the kidnapping alert. The registration of the Peugeot 306 at the wheel of which he is likely to circulate, too.

The child, born in Tunisia where the mother had gone to study and married in 2012, has dual Franco-Tunisian nationality. The mother returned to France with her daughter in 2017, according to local press. “When he started school here, the father was still seeing his daughter. But he couldn’t see her for a long time, ”also said the mayor, adding that the mother had family in Fontaine, especially her sister. According to the prosecution, “the father is suspected of having been violent with the mother in the past”.

This Friday morning, a listening unit was set up by the rectorate within the Jules-Ferry school (200 students), where Eya is educated from the large section, in particular for “class students” of the girl, indicated the rectorate.