An 8 year old girl has been kidnapped by three grown men in France.
The three men contacted the grandmother of the child to say that she was involved with a school project.
The girl, however, has not been heard from since Tuesday.
She lived with her grandmother in a village near the town of Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, in the Vosges department. The woman had legal custody of her granddaughter after the Justice ruled that her mother, Lola Montemaggi, was not in a position to take care of her. According to the ruling, she wasn’t even allowed to be alone with her.
Three men showed up Tuesday before noon at the house where Mia lived with her grandmother. They said they were representatives of the Territorial Educational Services (Servicios Educativos Territoriales).
They claimed to have gone at the request of Mia’s school and said they had to take her to a study center. That is how they entered and took her away, without resorting to violence, according to prosecutor Nicolás Heitz, quoted by Le Parisien. By the time the grandmother called the girl’s teachers, who denied any link to these men, it was too late.
The woman immediately filed a police report. When police investigators went looking for her mother, they did not find her. Her mental state is fragile. She tried to live on the margins of society, she had extremist ideas and had expressed suicidal ideas in front of her daughter.
A kidnapping alert was released. The three suspects in the kidnapping were arrested Wednesday night in Paris. They were not with the girl when they were arrested. The Police reported that the trio was under the watchful eye of the General Directorate of Internal Security for being considered potential extremists.
They are part of “preparationism”, a far-right movement that considers that the breakdown of the social order due to some catastrophe is imminent and that it is necessary to be prepared for when the time comes. This often includes being armed to defend yourself when chaos erupts. In fact, the researchers found gunpowder and instructions for making bombs in one of their houses.
Still no trace of Mia. What is known is that she is eight years old, she is one meter and 30 centimeters tall, has brown eyes and long hair. When she was abducted she was wearing black pants and a vest with gold polka dots.
The main hypothesis of the Police is that the kidnappers gave the girl to the mother, who took her to some unknown place. Montemaggi, 28, is also a supporter of preparationism. She wanted to educate Mia at her house, according to her own parameters, and she flatly rejected her going to school. It’s one of the reasons they took custody of her and gave her to her grandmother.
Montemaggi’s activity on social media suggests that she was a follower of various conspiracy theories. Among other things, she wrote baseless comments about the origin of COVID-19 and 5G networks, in line with the discourse of many extremist groups that are very active in some web forums.
