Boy smuggled in suitcase into Spain reunited with Mother
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Adou Ouattara was found in a suitcase at a Spanish border crossing.
The boy who was found in a suitcase being smuggled into Spain early this year, has been reunited with his mother.
Eight-year-old Adou Ouattara was found in a suitcase at a Spanish border crossing.
He was being cared for at a youth since border police discovered him on 7 May in the suitcase of a Moroccan woman, according to a statement from the city of Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in north Africa.
His father who is said to have planned the exercise was arrested for trying to smuggle the young boy, however sources say he is set to be released.
However his lawyer said the father knew nothing of the suitcase plan, believing his son was to be brought in by car with a visa he had paid for.
Police in Ceuta had found eight-year-old Adou Ouattara curled up and covered inside a suitcase without air vents at a border checkpoint on May 7.
He was rescued by border police and has been staying at a youth center since then
The suitcase containing Adou was being carried through a pedestrian border crossing by a 19-year-old woman, whose identity has not been released, when a security scanner detected the boy inside.
Last month officials granted Adou authorization to live in Spain for one year and had been waiting for results of DNA tests before turning him over to his mother Lucie Ouattara, who lives legally in Spain’s Canary Islands off the Moroccan coast.
Adou was reunited with his mother Monday after tests proved they were related.
Thousands of migrants risk their lives trying to enter Ceuta and Melilla, another Spanish territory bordering Morocco, in search of a better life in Europe.
Many Africans try to scramble over the seven-meter (23-foot) fences that separate the Spanish cities from Morocco.
Others smuggle themselves over the border hidden in vehicles and cargoes, or try to swim or sail from shores on the Moroccan side.
