A man charged with kidnapping a nine-year-old French girl during a wedding in the Alps has admitted to police that she got into his car but he denies abducting her, his lawyer has said, reports The Guardian.
A week after Maëlys de Araujo went missing in the eastern village of Pont-de-Beauvoisin, a 34-year-old man was remanded in custody on Sunday on charges [1] of “kidnapping, illegal confinement or arbitrary detention”.
The man was a guest at the wedding that Maëlys was attending with her parents when she went missing in the early hours of August 27th.
Her DNA was found in his car, which was parked next to the community hall where the celebrations were held and was cleaned the day after.
The suspect’s lawyer, Bernard Meraud, said his client told police that Maëlys “got into his car with a little boy, onto the back seat, to see if his [the suspect’s] dog was in the boot.”
Meraud confirmed a trace of her DNA had been found on the dashboard but that his client “completely denied” kidnapping her.
Meraud said several DNA traces, including that of his client, had been found on the dashboard and that someone who was in contact with the child could have “transferred” her DNA into the vehicle.
He also suggested the children could have climbed into the car unbeknown to the driver, noting that all the windows were left down during the party.
The disappearance of the girl, who was wearing a white dress and carrying a cuddly toy, has dominated French headlines over the past week.
Sniffer dogs lost the scent from her toy in the car park outside the venue, raising fears she was kidnapped and taken away by car.
Police, search and rescue teams, divers and cavers have been combing the woods and lakes in the area about 30 miles (50km) north of Grenoble but failed to find any sign of Maëlys.
Several hundred residents organised another search on Saturday that also proved fruitless.
Speaking to France’s RTL radio the suspect’s mother said her son was innocent. “He’s a good boy who wouldn’t hurt a soul,” said the woman, who was not identified by name, accusing the authorities of “hounding him because they have to find a culprit”.
The suspect was arrested last week with a friend over inconsistencies in their account of the night’s events, but the pair were later released.
According to France Info radio, he is a former soldier who lives with his parents a few miles from Pont-de-Beauvoisin and does various odd jobs.
Investigators became interested in him after it emerged he had been missing from the party around the time Maëlys disappeared and washed his car the day after the wedding.
His lawyer said that he cleaned the car with a view to selling it.
On Sunday, he was re-arrested after the police uncovered fresh evidence.
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1: Some media interpret a French judicial move to place a suspect "under investigation" as the same as bringing charges, as in the above report by AFP. In strict legal terms, charges are only brought in France at the end of a judicial investigation, if and when the suspect is sent sent for trial. The placing under investigation of a suspect implies that a magistrate believes there is, as described by the French code of law, "serious and concordant" evidence of their guilt.
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