Rokia Traoré should be transferred to the Belgian authorities “in the coming days”, her Italian lawyer, Maddalena Claudia Del Re, announced on Wednesday in a message sent to Le Parisien. The Court of Cassation in Rome on Tuesday rejected the famous Malian singer's appeal against her handover to Belgium.
The singer and guitarist was arrested in June at Rome's Fiumicino airport, where she had just landed to give a concert in the country, following a conviction in Belgium in a case of failure to represent a child .
The Brussels public prosecutor's office had specified that her arrest followed “a decision of the Brussels criminal court of October 18, 2023 having sentenced the person concerned, by default, to a sentence of two years' imprisonment on the charge of non-representation of child” to the person having custody of the child.
Rokia Traoré had already been arrested in March 2020 in Paris and incarcerated for around ten days in Fleury-Mérogis prison (Essonne), under a European arrest warrant, because a Belgian court had ordered her to surrender her minor daughter to the child's Belgian father, Jan Goossens.
Released after ten days, she broke her judicial control by fleeing to Mali, aboard a private plane from Le Bourget airport, with her daughter.
Flight to Mali
“Rokia was sentenced to two years in prison during a trial which took place in Brussels without her being informed, in her absence and without her being able to be defended by a lawyer, in violation of the rights of defense and the principle of a fair trial,” said his Italian lawyer on Wednesday, denouncing “an injustice.” “She was arrested without the Belgian criminal court hearing her voice,” she added, adding that “today, the battle for Rokia’s rights is moving to Brussels.”
“I'm scared, I don't feel safe. For more than five years, I have been constantly afraid,” wrote the singer in a letter addressed to Italian justice, which Le Parisien was able to consult. “The Belgian citizen father decided to no longer see his child while waiting for her to be delivered to him, all expenses paid, on Belgian territory. (…) And it is me who is in prison, treated like a criminal, and it is my children who suffer from never having been taken into account by Belgian justice,” she added.
Sven Mary, lawyer for Jan Goossens, assured that Rokia Traoré's rights of defense had always been respected contrary to what her Italian lawyer asserts. But “for years, she (Rokia Traoré) chose to ignore Belgian justice, not to be represented, as well as to flout the Belgian family judgments which attempted to restore the balance between the mother and the father,” added Me Mary. He stressed that Jan Goossens was not asking for sole custody of their daughter but only to “spend the holidays in Belgium” with her. “Jan Goossens and the Belgian court want balanced solutions”, but Rokia Traoré “has refused her daughter any contact with her father (…) since March 2019”, protested Sven Mary.
In addition to her musical career, Rokia Traoré has also distinguished herself through her work alongside the UN to raise awareness of the situation of refugees, particularly in Africa.
