Photography issued by the gendarmerie 19 August 2016 shows a portrait of Nathael (9 years), abducted by his father 19 August 2016 in Romenay. – Handout / FRENCH POLICE / AFP

Nathael was found. This is the Deputy Prosecutor of Macon, Frédéric Jacques, who announced Saturday at a press conference in the premises of the gendarmerie in Charnay-lès-Mâcon. The nine year old boy, missing since Friday, was found in good health with his father in Vaucluse, in the abduction alert system.

The child and his father were found “in now relax near a river “by the police” in the Bédarrides area “near the home of the respondent, said the magistrate. Nathael staying with his paternal grandparents during the holidays to
 Romenay, a small town Saône-et-Loire. His parents are separated but his mother, with whom he lives in the Var, has maintained good relations with her in-laws and had entrusted their children for a few days.



Testimonies allowed the locate

Nathael was to return to Toulon on Friday but when her grandmother came to wake him at 6:30, she found that pillows in bed The father, aged 58, came from Vaucluse by car, returned home in which he holds the key overnight, his mobile phone having bounded around 2 Romenay – he turned off thereafter. Before hitting the road with the child, dressed in his pajamas and a sweater.

In the late morning Friday, the vehicle was controlled by the police near Macon but the kidnapping alert n had not yet been triggered, the grandmother had not reported the disappearance. It’s mother informed by a father’s sister also live in the Vaucluse, who complained Toulon, following which the alert has been triggered in the evening. Twenty policemen were then mobilized the father’s home, testimony to locate her son.



No trace of violence raised

Investigators found no signs of violence or constraint on Nathael, waiting his mother, Françoise Husband, the gendarmerie of Carpentras. “I’m glad he could be found, but I’m still not very good,” she said at midday. “I wish I never live that day,” she summarized, about the hours spent waiting for news of his son.

The father, placed in custody at Avignon, must be transferred to the day in the research section of the gendarmerie of Dijon. He faces five years in prison. Unemployed or bank account, it is in an “unstable situation”, according to prosecutors. He had already removed his son in 2012, for two months. This precedent led to his being sentenced in 2014, procedure in which he had refused a psychiatric examination. Last March, the Toulon Justice awarded temporarily to the mother exclusive exercise of parental authority, depriving the father of his custody and visitation. “He knew but chose the strength of solution,” said the magistrate.



Triggered 18 times and always efficient

The plan “Abduction Alert”, set up in France in 2006, is a massive warning system launched under the authority of the prosecutor, through fifty distribution channels (radio, TV, websites, station signs and highways, urban billboards , network SNCF and RATP, 22,000 terminals of the French Games) to mobilize the population in the search for the abducted child and her abductor. Individuals can relay the alert via social networks and smartphone applications.

It was triggered 18 times since its launch, according to the Ministry of Justice, and has always allowed for far find abducted children. It is largely inspired by the map “Amber Alert”, created in Texas in 1996, following the kidnapping and murder of the little Amber Hagerman.

It is however activated if several criteria are met : a proven kidnapping and not simply disappear; a child victim whose physical integrity or life to be in danger; elements of information to locate the child. The latest warning of this type dates back to the abduction of a four year old girl in July in L’Isle-d’Abeau (Isère), recovered unharmed within minutes after triggering the alarm.

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