Abducted toddler returns to France

A three-year-old French girl repeatedly seized by her warring parents has returned to France with her father. Elise Andre, whose Russian mother was found with her in Hungary, was grabbed last month by two men after they beat up the girl’s father.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov urged dialogue with France. ‘‘We are faced here with a clearly complicated legal dispute in which the judicial systems of two states have taken conflicting decisions on the same case,” he said. “We are planning to consult with France about using jurists from both sides.’‘ The toddler and her mother, Irina Belenkaya, were stopped on Sunday by Hungarian authorities while trying to cross into Ukraine after they showed up on the border post’s computer system. The mother, who is still being held in Hungary and could face a prison sentence, is to appear in court in Budapest. The centre of a bitter parental battle, Elise’s mother fled to Russia with the little girl after a French court awarded her father, Jean Michel Andre, custody last year. Elise was later returned to France after her father snatched her back in a Moscow street.More about: France, Russia

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