Minutes after authorities issued a national kidnapping alert after two children aged 5 and 3 were kidnapped by their father, they were found in good health. The adult was arrested.
For the first time this year, theKidnapping alert was triggered, in agreement with the Ministry of the Interior, on Monday January 20. At the very beginning of the evening, around 7:30 p.m., the competent authorities became aware of the kidnapping and the urgency of the situation, and mobilized several patrols, “i.e. around thirty gendarmes”, “as well as ten investigators from the Lille Research Section”according to BFM TV. These were invested in trying to find two young children. Mohammed et Nasimof 5 et 3 ans respectively, which would have been kidnapped by their father according to the first elements of the investigation.
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The scene allegedly took place earlier in the day, around 1:10 p.m. in the town of Fourmies located in the Nord department. The two boys were at that time with their mother, under her responsibility, and kidnapped directly from the public highway. Our colleagues specify that at that time the mother was walking “in a shopping street in this small town south of Maubeuge”.
The motives of the main suspect unknown
Finally, shortly after the Kidnapping Alert was triggered, the children were found not far from there, and are “healthy”. “The two children wanted in the North this Monday January 20 were found in Beuvrages (North) in the early evening, shortly before 9 p.m.”affirms the editorial staff of the continuous news channel. We learned earlier that “Mohamed is 110 cm tall”that he was “dressed in a black and white coat, a black hat, black jeans and black sneakers”. For this part, “Nassim is 70 cm tall”he wore “gray jeans, a brown coat, a beige hat with ‘teddy’ ears and black sneakers”according to the General Directorate of the National Gendarmerie. Their father was traveling in a light gray Audi A3 with registration BD-761-QQ.
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-This was finally arrested shortly after. This is a man of “Maghrebi guy, measuring 1.65 m, brown eyes, short black hair, growing beard, aged 38, wearing a navy blue down jacket, black pants and black sneakers” et “a gray neck warmer”. For the moment, no other information allows us to know his degree of involvement in the kidnapping of the two children, nor his motivations if applicable. But everything suggests that the investigators’ investigations could quickly bear fruit.
Who triggers the Kidnapping Alert and in what case?
On its website, the Ministry of Justice presents the Kidnapping Alert system “aims to send a massive message to the population in the event of child abduction”. It is stipulated that “its triggering allows the rapid dissemination, throughout the national territory, of precise information with the aim of finding the child as quickly as possible”. It is at public prosecutor that it is the task of defining whether or not it is necessary to trigger it, depending on four essential criteria. The removal must be provenand there must not be no doubt that it could be a disappearance “even worrying”. The victim must be minor and its “vie” or his “physical integrity” must be “a danger”. Finally, the prosecutor must have information that “the broadcast may allow the location of the child and/or his abductor”.
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On average each year we report more than 40,000 disappearances of minors in Franceeither 110 per dayaccording to an annual report from the 116,00 Missing Children relating to the year 2023. We specify that these are indeed the runaways which represent the vast majority of casesor 95% of the reports made.
