Italian prosecutors on Monday opened a kidnapping investigation against the grandfather of a 6-year-old Israeli boy who lost his family in a cable car disaster in the country earlier this year.
Prosecutors in the northern city of Pavia said Shmuel Peleg is suspected of aggravated kidnapping and asked him to return his grandson Eitan Biran to Italy in accordance with the Hague Convention on the Rights of the Child. Children, according to the BBC.
By law, Israel must do everything possible to return the boy to his legal guardian in Italy as soon as possible.
Eitan’s current legal guardian, Aya Biran-Nirko, sister of the child’s late father, based in Italy, filed a complaint with Italian police alleging that the boy was abducted by Peleg and taken to Israel.
The boy’s other aunt, Gali Peleg, denied the boy had been abducted and said he has initiated legal proceedings to adopt his nephew.
The Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera reported on Monday that Peleg was driving with Biran from Italy to the Swiss city of Lugano, apparently after leaving the country with his grandson’s Israeli passport. From Switzerland, they traveled by private plane to Israel, according to the newspaper.
The aunt stated that when the maternal grandfather came to pick up the child for an arranged visit on Saturday morning, it was agreed that the child would return to dinner. But when Eitan did not return, the aunt filed a police report Saturday night, Italian news reported.
Biran-Nirko reportedly also received a message from the Pelegs’ lawyer confirming that Eitan had arrived in Israel.
Rescuers are working near the remains of a cable car after it collapsed near the top of the Stresa-Mottarone line in the Piedmont region of northern Italy, as seen in the aerial photograph, on 23 May 2021. (Firefighters via AP)
Fourteen people, including Eitan’s father, Amit Biran, 30; his mother Tal Peleg-Biran, 26; Tom, 2-year-old brother; and her Tel Aviv great-grandparents, Barbara, 71, and Yitzhak Cohen, 81, died in the May 24 crash after a cable crashed into the aerial tram carrying visitors to the Cape Town. week at the top of Mount Mottarone in the Piedmont region. The five were buried in Israel a few days later.
A family friend told the Channel 12 news on Sunday that the Biran family was working with Italian authorities to return Eitan to the country.
Gali Peleg in August accused Biran-Nirko of kidnapping the boy and preventing him from having a “normal childhood”. Although Eitan was raised in Italy, Peleg’s husband, Ron Peri, claimed that the boy’s Israeli parents had never wanted him to grow up there and would have preferred him to receive a Jewish education in Israel.
In June, Marcella Severino, the mayor of the city of Stresa, where the cable car began, told an Italian newspaper that Biran-Nirko was “a constant presence in the child’s life. It’s in good hands. “
Eitan suffered severe trauma in the crash and Biran-Nirko took on the task of dealing with the hospital system and its recovery, although Peri said the deal had to be temporary.
The Associated Press contributed to the report.