Renowned Maldivian vocalist Rokia Traoré was detained at Rome’s main international airport due to a Belgian conviction stemming from a custody battle.
According to Italian media, she was taken into custody at Fiumicino airport while arriving for a show.
An airport representative told the news agency on Sunday that border police had confirmed her detention.
After disobeying a court order to give her child to her Belgian father, Traoré was first imprisoned in France in 2020 on the basis of a Belgian arrest warrant.
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A few months after her conditional release, she took a private plane to Mali, circumventing a prohibition on her leaving France until it.
Belgian authorities informed news that Traoré was sentenced to two years in prison last October in absentia by a Belgian court on charges of parental abduction for “failing to hand over a child to the person entitled to custody.”
Since she was four years old, her nine-year-old daughter has resided in Mali.
According to a lawyer representing the child’s father—Traoré’s ex-partner—he hasn’t spoken to his daughter since.
She had been traveling from Mali to Brussels when she was first detained in 2020 with the intention of appealing the custody decision, according to her attorneys.
