TOULOUSE.- The 17-year-old British boy found in France six years after his disappearance in Spain will return to England in the coming days to his grandmother’s house, who has custody.
Alex Batty, originally from the English town of Oldham (north), was picked up by a delivery driver in a mountainous area in the south of France. French and British police confirmed his identity.
Police suspect that his mother and grandfather kidnapped him in 2017, when he was 11, under the pretext of a holiday to Spain, and then lived in alternative lifestyle communes in this country and in the French Pyrenees.
“Our priority is to bring him back to the United Kingdom (…) I hope it will happen in the next few days,” Assistant Commissioner Chris Sykes of Manchester Police said at a press conference.
His grandmother, separated from his grandfather and who, according to the British media, had custody of the child, welcomed his reappearance.
“We hope that the grandmother comes to look for him and start the repatriation with the British,” Toulouse prosecutor Samuel Vuelta-Simon told AFP, confirming that he is in “a safe place” and in the care of “social services.” .
Some British media suggested the grandmother may be too weak to travel.
“Pretty amazing”
Alex Batty was last heard from in Spain on October 8, 2017, the day he, his mother and grandfather were expected to return home from a family vacation.
The young man’s grandmother, Susan Caruana, said she believed the mother and grandfather had brought him to live with a spiritual community with an alternative lifestyle without a traditional education.
“They didn’t want me to go to school. They don’t believe in conventional school,” Caruana told The Times newspaper. “I spoke to him this afternoon and it is definitely him. He was speaking to a child when he was with us and now I spoke to a man.”
“It’s pretty incredible when you don’t know if someone is dead or alive,” he added.
At the moment, the whereabouts of the mother and grandfather are unknown, who, according to British media, are being sought in connection with the disappearance.
“The mother kidnapped him”
According to the French regional newspaper La Dépêche du Midi, a student and delivery driver named Fabien Accidini found Batty after the young man had been wandering in a mountainous area for about four days.
Accidini, who delivers medications to pharmacies in the area, said that it was raining a lot when he picked him up in his car and that he told him his story.
“He said that his mother kidnapped him when he was about 12 years old (…) Since then, he had lived in Spain in a luxury house with about ten people. He would have arrived in France around 2021,” explained the student.
Batty had lived with his mother in a “spiritual community” in France and had “no animosity toward her, but he wanted to return to his grandmother,” he added.
La Dépêche du Midi said he had lived in France with his mother and grandfather in a “nomadic community” between the southern French departments of Aude and Ariège.
Police acknowledged that some aspects of the case remained unclear.
“We still have work to do to establish all the circumstances surrounding his disappearance and where he has been all these years,” Skyes said.
Source: With information from AP
