Malian musician Rokia Traoré, who was arrested in Rome final June over a world youngster custody dispute, shall be handed over to Belgium within the coming days after Italy’s highest court docket rejected her attraction, her lawyer mentioned on Wednesday.
Traoré, 50, who can be a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations’ refugee company UNHCR, was arrested on 20 June at Rome’s Fiumicino airport underneath a European arrest warrant. She had beforehand been sentenced to 2 years in jail in Belgium in October 2023 in reference to the custody of her daughter. A Belgian court docket had ordered her to give up her nine-year-old daughter to the kid’s father, Jan Goossens, who’s a Belgian nationwide.
“Rokia suffered an injustice. She was arrested with out the Belgian legal court docket listening to her voice. Now, the battle for Rokia’s rights strikes to Brussels,” lawyer Maddalena Del Re mentioned in a press release to Reuters.
Since her arrest in Italy, she has been in jail close to the Italian capital, the place she had flown to carry a live performance exterior Rome’s Colosseum.
In response to Del Re, the Belgian authorized course of is at odds with Italian constitutional tenets and worldwide agreements, as a verdict was delivered within the defendant’s absence.
The singer was initially detained on a Belgian arrest warrant in France in 2020 after getting off a aircraft in Paris.
“Even though I dwell in Mali, I’ve at all times answered to the Belgian justice system,” she mentioned on the time, explaining that she had been travelling to Europe to attend a custody listening to.
She was launched on sure situations, and later travelled to Mali, the place her daughter lives, by way of a non-public flight, disregarding directions to not depart France till completion of her extradition proceedings to Belgium.
The daughter of a Malian diplomat, Traoré is a star in a rustic that’s greatest identified within the west for its outstanding musicians. As a singer-songwriter, she has pioneered an adventurous fusion of African and western kinds. She has labored with the American theatre director Peter Sellars, and gained the most important French music award Victoire de la Musique. In 2019, she was visitor director of the Brighton competition.
Supply hyperlink
