At the beginning of the year, a mother wants to receive her eleven-year-old son, but the boy does not show up at the meeting point. Instead, the father travels to Panama with the child, where he is tracked down and arrested. Now he has to answer for it, he no longer has any contact with his child.
At the start of a child kidnapping process in Panama, the child's father described the act as an act of desperation and admitted the allegations. He is sorry for his son, with whom he no longer has any contact, he said in a shaky voice and in tears at the start of the hearing on Tuesday.
The 50-year-old is accused in the Pforzheim district court of not having brought the eleven-year-old boy back to his mother after a Christmas holiday in North Rhine-Westphalia. Instead, shortly before the turn of the year, he took him to Belgium, then to Amsterdam and finally to Panama, the man said. There have always been arguments about contact. "I wanted to protect him." The media had reported that the father was opposed to vaccination and did not want his son to be vaccinated. The public prosecutor's office did not comment on this.
"It was hell," said the boy's mother, who lives in Mühlacker (Entkreis), shortly before the trial began. At the beginning of January she had waited in vain for her son at the agreed meeting point. "Our lives will never be the same again." She had also been to Panama twice to look for her son. When the boy did not appear at the meeting point at Cologne Central Station as agreed, the Federal Criminal Police Office and Interpol were called in and the man was sought with an international arrest warrant. At the beginning of February he was arrested in Panama and then extradited to Germany.
According to a court spokesman, a psychological expert and four other witnesses are invited in addition to the mother. According to the information, a verdict could be made later today. The child is back in the mother's care.
