More than 30 hours of research. Eya, 10, was abducted around 08:15 a.m. on Thursday while walking with her mother in the street to go to her school in Fontaine, a suburb of Grenoble (Isère). According to the prosecutor's office, the father "and a hooded accomplice" "gassed with tear gas the mother of the little girl" before seizing the child.
But Friday at 14:30 p.m., more than 1000,<> km from the Isère, Danish police reported having found her, during a border crossing from Germany, with her father and an accomplice.
Passed through Switzerland and Germany
Friday, the day after the kidnapping, the prosecutor of the Republic of Grenoble, Eric Vaillant, had announced the establishment of international arrest warrants, suspecting a departure abroad of the father with his daughter. "The possible destination countries are obviously Sweden and Tunisia," because of the father's dual nationality, he said.
Then over the hours "we had indications that allowed us to know that they had passed through Switzerland, then Germany, and we found them in Denmark," detailed the magistrate on BFMTV.
On Friday afternoon, a message from Danish police on Twitter announced that two men had been arrested at 14:30 p.m. "at the Rødbyhavn border crossing" on a ferry from Germany. With them a little girl, Eya.
The father of the girl, "did not surrender at all, he was expected by the services of Denmark, which were on alert, thanks to the indications that the Grenoble police had given," said Friday evening Eric Vaillant, while adding that the arrest had gone well. The second man is a priori a friend of the father, who lives in France.
The father and his accomplice expected in France
The prosecutor has since praised the effectiveness of international cooperation in several media outlets. All available information on the wanted individuals or the vehicles used had indeed been sent to the European authorities of the various countries to find the daughter and the father.
The latter, as well as his accomplice, "will be handed over in the coming weeks to the investigating judge of Grenoble who will indict them, and the prosecutor that I am will ask that they be placed in provisional detention on their arrival," he explained.
A judicial investigation had been opened in the afternoon of Friday, in particular for "aggravated violence" on the mother of the child as well as "subtraction by ascendant" and complicity.
The child is doing well and has been taken into the care of the local authorities. The France embassy in Copenhagen said it was "in contact with the Danish police and authorities as well as with Eya's mother to proceed with her repatriation to France as soon as possible." The mother took the road to Denmark to find her daughter.
