Eya, 10, who was abducted by her father Thursday in Isère, returned to France, said Monday to AFP the lawyer of her mother Melanie Muridi. The little girl "is happy to have found her mother, they returned to France and the important thing is that they are together," said the lawyer.
Muridi added that the child would not return to school immediately without specifying whether she had returned home. Mother and daughter "need to resume a normal life, away from the hustle and bustle to be able to move towards some normalcy," she said.
A journey from Isère to Denmark
Eya, a CM2 schooler, was abducted on Thursday while walking with her mother on the way to her school in Fontaine, a suburb of Grenoble. According to the prosecutor's office, the father "and a hooded accomplice" had "gassed with tear gas the mother of the little girl" before seizing the child.
Thirty hours after her abduction, the girl was found Friday afternoon in Rodbyhavn, a hundred kilometers south of Copenhagen, crossing point of ferries from Germany. While the Danish police proceeded to arrest the kidnappers - his father and an accomplice - Eya had also been put "in safety".
On Friday evening, the public prosecutor in Grenoble Eric Vaillant had indicated that the girl was "as well as possible after such events" and the embassy of France had sent a team to Rodbyhavn "to facilitate the steps between Eya's mother and the Danish authorities".
Kidnappers handed over to France within 'days to weeks'
The evidence in the investigators' possession suggested that the father, his accomplice and the child had gone abroad, with possible destinations being Sweden and Tunisia, countries corresponding to the dual nationality of the 53-year-old father.
From now on, the handover of the two suspects to the French authorities could take "from a few days to several weeks," said the prosecutor of the Republic of Grenoble. A judicial investigation has been opened, in particular for aggravated violence against the child's mother, as well as for abduction by ascendant and complicity. A European arrest warrant had been issued.