Missing British teenager found in south-west France after six years

A British boy who disappeared in Spain six years ago has been found in south-west France, prosecutors said on Thursday.

Published: 15 December 2023 09:24 CET

Missing British teenager found in south-west France after six years

Alex Batty was last seen in Spain on October 8th of 2017, when he was 11. (Image: Greater Manchester Police)

The boy, Alex Batty, now 17, was found on Wednesday, December 13th, close to the town of Revel, south-east of Toulouse, regional prosecutors said.

“We have confirmed his identity and he will now return to Britain,” Toulouse prosecutors said in a statement to AFP.

Greater Manchester Police said that the boy, who is from Oldham, had left the UK in September 2017 for a pre-agreed family holiday in Spain. At the time of his disappearance, enquiries led police to believing that the family may have tried to head to Melilla in Morocco from the Port of Malaga.

“This is a complex and long-running investigation, and we need to make further enquiries as well as putting appropriate safeguarding measures in place,” Manchester police said.

The BBC said the boy’s grandmother Susan Caruana, his legal guardian, had previously said she believed Alex’s mother and grandfather had taken him to live with a spiritual community to seek an alternative lifestyle.

Alex Batty was last seen in Spain on October 8th, 2017, the day they were expected to return home.

The BBC said the teenager is currently in a centre for minors in Toulouse, awaiting the arrival of British police and consular staff to return him to England.

“The mother and grandfather, who do not have parental guardianship of Alex, have not been located but remain wanted in connection with his disappearance,” the BBC said.

The boy’s grandmother, who is divorced from the grandfather, told the Sun newspaper she was thrilled he had been found.

She said: “I am so happy. I have spoken to him and he is well. He is currently with the authorities in France. It is such a shock.”

Regional French newspaper La Dépêche du Midi said he had been wandering for some four days in the mountainous area when he was found by student Fabien Accidini.

Accidini, 26, who delivers medicines to pharmacies in the area, said it was raining hard when he picked up Alex Batty on an isolated road in the early hours of the morning.

“I was on the road between Camon and Chalabre when I first came across this young man walking with a flashlight,” Accidini told La Dépêche. “He was [walking] in the rain, with a skateboard under his arm and a backpack.

“Once I’d delivered my medication, I knew I’d have to take the same route again, so when I saw him again, I offered to give him a lift and drop him off wherever he wanted. He didn’t hesitate to get into my van.”

The young man initially told Accidini that his name was Zach, but soon revealed his real identity and said that he had left an itinerant spiritual community that had arrived in France some two years earlier.

“He said that his mother had kidnapped him when he was around 12,” the student told La Dépêche.

“Since then, he had lived in Spain in a luxury house with around 10 people. He would have arrived in France around 2021.”

He had lived with his mother in a “spiritual community” in France and had “no animosity towards her but wanted to go back to his grandmother”.

There was no immediate information on the whereabouts of the mother and grandfather and what legal proceedings they may face.

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“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.