French man charged with locking son in van for more than a year

The boy was found malnourished, naked, lying next to human excrement and unable to walk, the prosecutor said. French man charged with locking son in van for more than a year Copyright current_year BBC. All rights reserved. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking. Copyright current_year BBC. All rights reserved. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking. The bulletproof vest of an unidentified police officer is seen from behind in an archive image. The vest says 'Police' and has a badge bearing the French flag on. A man in eastern France has been charged with keeping his nine-year-old son locked in a van for more than a year. The boy was found on Monday after neighbours in the town of Hagenbach, Alsace, heard "sounds of a child" coming from the van, which was parked in the common area of a block of flats. He was lying naked under a blanket, on a pile of rubbish near human excrement, malnourished and unable to walk due to spending a long time in the same position, the state prosecutor said. Under questioning, the 43-year-old father said he had kept the boy in the van since November 2024 to protect him from his 37-year-old partner who "wanted to put the child in psychiatric care," the prosecutor said. The father has not been named. The couple lived in the block of flats with the boy's siblings - his 12-year-old sister and 10-year-old half-sister. The boy told police that his father brought him food twice a day and left him bottles of water, according to Le Parisien newspaper. He said he had to urinate in plastic bottles and defecate in bin bags, and that the last time he had a shower was at the end of 2024. Neighbours told police that the boy seemed to have disappeared suddenly at the end of that year, but that they understood from the couple that he had been placed in care. Some said they heard noises from time to time in the van, but had been told it was a cat. According to the father, his partner did not know the boy was in the van. The man has been charged with the "sequestration and arbitrary detention of a minor" as well as depriving him of proper food and medical care. He has been remanded in custody. His partner has been charged with "non-assistance to a minor in danger" and "non-denunciation of mistreatment of a minor." She has been granted conditional bail. The three children have been placed in temporary care pending the decision of a children's court judge. German media reports say Marla-Svenja Liebich used to be a member of a neo-Nazi group called Blood and Honour. The explosion at a service station in Creeslough, County Donegal, on 7 October 2022 killed ten people. US exhibition squad, the Harlem Globetrotters, met the pontiff in the Vatican, helping him to spin a basketball on the tip of his finger. Presidential hopeful Jordan Bardella was pictured on a Corsican beach with Princess Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris are on their way home after being allowed to leave the country, the French president says. The lorry driver is in custody after the train driver died during the collision in northern France. It appears to be the first ship owned by a major European firm to go through the strait since the conflict began. The Paris police department had argued that the four-day gathering was a security threat because it could be a target of terrorism.