by Nurat Uthman
Renowned Malian singer Rokia Traore, arrested in Rome in June over an international child custody dispute, will be handed over to Belgium in the coming days after Italy’s highest court rejected her appeal, her lawyer said on Wednesday.
Traore, 50, is one of Africa’s best-known vocalists and a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations’ refugee agency UNHCR.
“Rokia suffered an injustice. She was arrested without the Belgian criminal court hearing her voice. Now, the battle for Rokia’s rights moves to Brussels,” lawyer Maddalena Del Re said in a statement to Reuters.
The lawyer added that Italy’s Court of Cassation followed a European Court of Justice ruling in favour of extradition in its decision late on Tuesday.
Traore was arrested on June 20 at Rome’s Fiumicino airport under a European arrest warrant. She had been sentenced to two years in prison in Belgium in Oct. 2023 in connection with a battle over custody of her daughter.
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.
Lawyer Del Re said the Belgian procedure contradicts Italian constitutional principles and international conventions due to a conviction having been handed down in the defendant’s absence.
The singer was first arrested in France in 2020 on a Belgian arrest warrant after failing to follow a court order to hand over her daughter to her Belgian father, the artist’s estranged former partner.
Months after she was conditionally released, she flew to Mali on a private flight, defying orders not to leave France until her extradition case was processed. Her daughter lives in Mali.
