His former romantic partner kidnapped in France along with her two minor children, he raped and physically attacked her repeatedly in front of the children, took her mobile phone and forced her to cross the Iberian Peninsula. driving at knifepoint until you reach Malagawhere the Spanish National Police have freed them, although their intention was to cross the Strait of Gibraltar and reach Algeria to escape justice.
A message sent by the victim to a relative due to the carelessness of her kidnapper alerted the French authorities about what was happening and, with this, began the investigation of a case that has been resolved thanks to international collaboration and that has ended with the alleged kidnapper. arrested and behind bars. He is charged with two crimes of attempted homicide, aggravated and continuous sexual assault, illegal detention, international judicial claim and mistreatment in the gender and domestic sphere, as well as a crime against privacy and another of damages.
After driving for endless days and once in the south of Spain, with nowhere to go or anywhere to hide, the man kept them held in the car in which they had traveled. In it they have spent the night during the 13 days that the ordeal of this woman and her two children at the hands of her ex-husband lasted until the Spanish National Police managed to find them and bring them to safety.
During all this time, the kidnapper did not allow them to clean themselves or change their clothes and they ate, as indicated by police sources, what the detainee found at the service stations where they stopped to refuel, which was practically reduced to bread, tuna and cookies.
When the agents found them, after almost two weeks of kidnapping and eating the little food that the detainee gave them, the vehicle was in a extreme unsanitary conditions and the family was in a state of malnutrition and dehydration. In addition, the woman had bruises and bites all over her body and the children had numerous insect bites. The three were taken to a medical center in Malaga for treatment.
Inside the car, the agents found the knife with which the man had threatened the victim and the woman’s broken mobile phone.
The investigation began with a request for collaboration from the French authorities to locate a woman and her two children, who had disappeared on October 3. The first investigations carried out by the National Police bore fruit and suggested that the woman and children could be traveling aboard a vehicle through Spain.
Investigators have learned that the alleged kidnapper forcibly detained his ex-partner and broke her phone to prevent her from communicating with anyone or asking for help. Together with the woman’s two minor children and threatening her with a knife, he forced her to drive through Spain and Portugal for more than 2,000 kilometers hardly letting her rest and subjecting her to continuous physical and sexual attacks that the victim’s children witnessed.
In a moment of inattention on the part of the kidnapper, the victim was able to take the mobile phone that was still operational and send a message to a person in his family environment in which he said “he wants to kill metell the police that they are the only ones who can save me and delete everything so that he doesn’t see it.”
International cooperation and the rapid action of the National Police have been key to solving the case and putting an end to the kidnapping before the woman and her children left Europe since, as investigators have learned, the man I intended to cross into Algeria in order to flee from French justice, where a European arrest and surrender order weighed on him.
The device carried out by the central Family and Women Care Unit (UFAM) “has been especially difficult given the risk that both the mother and the minors ran when encountering the aggressor,” explained sources close to the case, who highlighted that “the priority of the police operation was, at all times, discretion and speed” with the aim of protecting and maintaining the safety of the victims, given that the reaction of their kidnapper was unpredictable.