Mia, 8, was kidnapped by three men on Tuesday while at her grandmother’s house – SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP
Mia, the 8-year-old girl kidnapped last week in the Vosges and found safe and sound on Sunday in Switzerland, was handed over on Monday to her grandmother who has custody of her, we learned from the colonel of the gendarmerie Brice Mangou. The little girl “found her grandmother today” in a place that has been kept secret, said the boss of the Vosges gendarmerie.
The girl was kidnapped last Tuesday at the request of her mother by several men while the child was staying with her maternal grandmother in Poulières, a Vosges village located about thirty kilometers from Epinal. Her mother was no longer allowed to see her alone or to speak to her on the phone.
Five men prosecuted for his kidnapping
A kidnapping alert was quickly disseminated and significant police resources, in France and in several border countries, made it possible to find her Sunday morning with her mother in Switzerland, in a squat in the commune of Sainte-Croix.
The five men who organized her kidnapping are being prosecuted for “the kidnapping in an organized gang of a minor of [moins de] fifteen years and criminal association ”. Four of them were taken into custody. Lola Montemaggi, the girl’s mother, as well as a French national who helped her in Switzerland, are in detention in the canton of Vaud pending extradition proceedings.