After Italy’s top court denied her appeal, well-known Malian singer Rokia Traore, who was detained in Rome in June due to a global child custody dispute, will be turned over to Belgium in the next few days, her attorney announced on Wednesday.One of Africa’s most well-known singers, Traore, 50, serves as a goodwill representative for the UNHCR, the UN agency that handles refugees.”Rokia was the victim of injustice.
Without her voice being heard by the Belgian criminal court, she was taken into custody. The fight for Rokia’s rights is now taking place in Brussels,” attorney Maddalena Del Re told Reuters in a statement.
The attorney further stated that in its decision late Tuesday, Italy’s Court of Cassation upheld an extradition decision from the European Court of Justice.Under a European arrest warrant, Traore was taken into custody on June 20 at the Fiumicino airport in Rome. In October 2023, she was given a two-year prison sentence in Belgium related to a dispute over her daughter’s custody.
Since her arrest at Fiumicino, she has been in jail in Civitavecchia, near the Italian capital, where she had flown to hold a concert outside Rome’s Colosseum.
Because a conviction was rendered without the defendant’s presence, attorney Del Re claimed that the Belgian process went against both international norms and Italian constitutional principles.After she disregarded a court order to turn over her daughter to her Belgian father, the singer’s estranged ex-partner, she was first taken into custody in France in 2020 on a Belgian arrest warrant.
She disobeyed orders not to leave France until her extradition case was handled by taking a private flight to Mali months after being conditionally released. Her daughter lives in Mali.
