Portuguese court remands French couple in custody in abandoned children case

A Portuguese court in the city of Setúbal has remanded in custody the mother and stepfather of two French children that had been abandoned on a roadside earlier this week.

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Considered a flight risk, the court ordered 41-year-old woman and 55-year-old man to be placed in pretrial detention for the crimes of aggravated assault, endangerment and abandonment of the boys after a two-day hearing.

Marine Rousseau (41) and Marc Ballagriga (55) are suspected of having abandoned two children in a wooded area in Alcácer do Sal, in the district of Setúbal, on Tuesday.

The children, aged four and five, were spotted by a local man on the side of the road, who handed them over to the police. The children had a rucksack with food and water in it, but no identification documents.

In a statement issued by the Public Prosecutor's Office on 21 May, it was decided to "take the children into foster care, handing them over to a foster family, with the intervention and monitoring of the fostering organisation".

The children were medically monitored and discharged from hospital after it was concluded that they were"in good health", the statement said. They were then handed over to a French foster family in Lisbon pending their return to France.

The couple was arrested on Thursday in Fátima, 170 kilometres from where the children were abandoned, and then brought before a judge on Friday.

"They had a very distant attitude," a spokesman for Portugal's GNR police force, Carlos Canatario, told Portuguese television station SIC, adding the pair appeared "detached".

The couple was questioned for several hours at the court in a first session on Friday.

The Public Prosecutor's Office had immediately requested pretrial detention, a more serious measure that was confirmed by the investigating judge at the Setúbal court on Saturday.