2023. December 14 – 21:36
An English boy who had been missing in Spain for six years has been found in France According to the BBC Local authorities. The 17-year-old was found in the town of Reville, east of Toulouse, on Wednesday morning. The Toulouse prosecutor’s office told the BBC that his family had confirmed his identity.
In 2017, 11-year-old Alex Batty went on holiday to Spain with his mother and grandfather. They left with him for Marbella on 30 September, and were last seen in Malaga on 8 October.
The boy’s guardian is his grandmother, who said in 2018 that she believed his mother and grandfather had kidnapped Alex so they could live together in a spiritual community in Morocco. Now the mother and grandfather have not been found, but they are still looking for them.
A police source said on Wednesday that a car driver discovered the young man walking on the road. After the young man picked him up in his car, he told him what happened to him. According to a journalist from the French newspaper La Dépeche, he talked about how he was living in a nomadic community, and was not forced to do anything, but he found his mother strange and finally decided to run away.
He borrowed his cell phone from the driver and wrote about his grandmother on Facebook. He indicated that he was fine and wanted to see her. A police source also told the BBC that the young man was in good health and did not tell them that he had been subjected to ill-treatment.
