Malian singer Rokia Traore will be extradited from Italy to Belgium over an outstanding two-year prison sentence handed down in a child custody dispute, her lawyer said Thursday.
This was made known in a statement on Thursday by her attorney, Maddalena Claudia Del Re who was present when the musician was found guilty of kidnapping her parents and convicted in absentia by a Brussels court last year.
She was arrested in Italy in June and challenged the extradition order, but a Rome court ruled Thursday “Rokia will have to be transferred to Belgium within 10 days from today”, Maddalena told AFP.
In March 2020, Traore was taken into custody in Paris according to a European arrest warrant, following a decision made by a Belgian court directing her to give her nine-year-old daughter back to her father.
She defied a ban on leaving France and flew home to Mali several months later, before she could be sent to Belgium.
A lawyer for the child’s father said he had not had any contact with his daughter, who lives in Mali, since she turned four.
The lawyer said the father had offered to draw up a new custody agreement with Traore, validated by Malian and Belgian courts, to “find a way out of this nightmare and guarantee their child a future with two parents”.