A French woman and her partner were ordered detained on Saturday after being accused of abandoning two young boys in a rural area in Portugal.
The children, French brothers, ages 3 and 5, are the wife’s son.
They were found Tuesday along a road near Alcácer do Sal, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of Lisbon, carrying backpacks with food, water and a change of clothes.
They There were no identity documentsPortuguese media reported. A passerby and his wife rescued the boys and took them to the police station.
According to Portuguese media, rescuers said the boys reported that they were blindfolded and taken into the forest under the pretext of playing a game. The boys said that when they removed their blindfolds they could not find their mother or her car.
Search across Europe for mother and missing children
Portuguese authorities said the boys lived with their mother in Colmar, eastern France. The woman was no longer with the children’s father, who reported the mother and two boys missing on May 11.
French authorities then issued a Europe-wide appeal for help locating the woman and children.
Portuguese police arrested the woman and her current partner, a French citizen, at a café in the city of Fatima on Thursday. He was brought before Antonio Fialho, an investigating judge in the city of Setubal on Friday.
Mother and partner sent to jail
Judge Fialho ordered the woman and her partner to be held in pre-trial detention after a two-day hearing that ended on Saturday. She was charged with child endangerment and abandonment.
Both adults are suspected of causing grievous bodily harm and abandoning the children, Fialho said in court. According to the court, the man was also charged with aggravated assault on a child.
The mother is 41 years old and her partner is 55 years old.
*Editor’s note: DW follows the German press code, which emphasizes the importance of protecting the privacy of suspected perpetrators or victims and urges us to refrain from disclosing the full names of alleged perpetrators.
Edited by: Louis Olofse
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