A 3-year-old girl who was kidnapped
last month while walking with her father in France has been found in Hungary
with her Russian mother, police said Monday.
The Russian mother and French father are involved in a custody battle over the
child.
The mother and child were detained Sunday afternoon while trying to cross the
Hungarian border to Ukraine from the town of Tiszabecs, a Hungarian police
spokesman said.
The mother, Irina Belenkaya, was in custody in the city of Nyiregyhaza, 250
kilometers east of Budapest, and her daughter was taken to a nearby children's
home, police spokesman Gergely Fulop said.
"This is a success story for the Hungarian police," Fulop said, adding that
the mother would likely be handed over to French authorities.
He said the mother and child were detained at the border because a European
Union database used when checking travel documents indicated that the mother was
wanted in connection with a crime and that the girl had gone missing and was the
object of a search.
The father's lawyer said he spoke to his client by telephone on Monday afternoon
after he had picked up his daughter at the children's home.
Irina Zvonova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Embassy in Hungary, said a Budapest
court would consider whether to send the mother to France on Tuesday, Interfax
reported.
AP
Elise Andre, who has dual Russian-French citizenship.
The child was kidnapped on March 20 as she and her father, Jean-Michel Andre,
were taking a walk near their home in Arles, southern France. French media
reported that two men attacked the father and the child was spirited away. While
the parents were in divorce proceedings in 2007, French courts gave the child's
custody to the father. The mother took the child to Russia, and the father went
there and took her back to Arles.