Malian singer Rokia Traoré, arrested in June in Italy following a conviction in Belgium in a case of failure to produce a child, will be handed over to Belgium “within 10 days”, her lawyer announced to AFP.
Rokia Traoré “will have to be transferred to Belgium within 10 days from today,” her Italian lawyer, Maddalena Claudia Del Re, said in a message sent to AFP following a hearing before the Rome Court of Appeal.
The singer and guitarist, who was sentenced in absentia in October to two years in prison in this case, was arrested in June at Rome’s Fiumicino airport, where she had just landed to give a concert in the country.
The Brussels public prosecutor’s office had then indicated that “the arrest of Ms Traoré in Italy (followed) a decision of the Brussels Criminal Court of 18 October 2023 which sentenced the person concerned, in absentia, to a two-year prison sentence for failure to present a child” to the person having custody of the child.
Rokia Traoré had already been arrested in March 2020 in Paris under a European arrest warrant, because a Belgian court had ordered her to return her minor daughter to the child’s Belgian father, Jan Goossens. Despite a ban on leaving France, she had flown with her daughter to Mali.
Besides her musical career, Rokia Traoré is also known for her support for refugees. She became a UN ambassador for refugees in 2015.
