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Sunday 22 March 2009

France on alert for young girl abducted in custody battle

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There's still no sign of a young girl abducted on Friday afternoon in the southern French city of Arles.

Police launched an amber alert after the three-and-a-half-year-old Elise was snatched on her way home from school with her father.

And over the weekend that hunt was extended Europe-wide and in particular to neighbouring Switzerland after there were reports of a sighting of a girl matching her description at Geneva airport.

Those reports later turned out to be false.

Elise has been at the centre of an international battle for custody between her parents since the couple split three years ago, and already in her short life has been abducted three times.

Her father, Jean-Michel André, is French and her mother, Irina Belenkaya, is Russian.

Both parents have been given custody over their daughter by their respective countries and that has played a large part in the fact that Elise - and remember she is only three-and-a-half years old - has already been abducted three times in her short life.

When the couple split three years ago, a French court gave André custody of their daughter.

But just one month later she was kidnapped by Belenkaya and taken to Moscow.

An international arrest warrant was issued for the mother at the time but Russia refused to comply or even acknowledge it, and instead gave Belenkaya custody over her daughter.

So a stalemate was reached, with French courts having given André custody while as far as Russia was concerned Belenkaya was completely within her rights.

In September 2008 André flew to Moscow to find his daughter and for the second time she was abducted, although without any violence according to André.

Again the two countries' legal systems differed as to the rights of the parents.

As far as France was concerned, André had acted within his legal rights to bring Elise back to this country, while the authorities in Moscow said had had breached Russian custody law.

On Friday Elise was abducted for the third time.

Her father was left battered and bruised, and said afterwards in interviews that his daughter had been taken by two men "dressed as security" guards and a woman "wearing a wig".

For André it was clear that not only was Belenkaya behind this most recent abduction, she was also the woman "wearing a wig" and France has reissued an international warrant for her arrest.

If, as suspected, Elise is either on her way back to Moscow with her mother or is already there, André says he would once again try to retrieve her, even though there's an arrest warrant out for him in Russia.

"Of course I would go back to Russia, and of course I'll look for her. She's my daughter," he said.

"When I last went there to find her, I did it for her (well-being).

" Her mother had made me 'disappear' from her (Elise's) life. She didn't remember me any longer.

"I'm not frightened. I won't stop."

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