The prosecutor did not respond to requests for comment and Mr. Peleg could not be contacted immediately.
Simbari, the aunt’s lawyer, said Eitan had lived in Italy since he was a year old and had Italian and Israeli citizenship. The boy’s mother tongue was Italian, he said, though he also spoke Hebrew.
“We are very concerned because this child was ripped from a family environment, so it is a second trauma after what he experienced in May,” Simbari said.
Aunt Biran, the aunt, told reporters on Sunday that Mr Peleg had picked up Eitan on Saturday morning for an agreed visit to go buy toys. After the boy did not return home, he said he started calling Mr. Peleg, who did not answer. On Saturday evening, he told reporters, he received a text message from his grandfather saying, “Eitan has returned home.”
This summer’s court ruling had also ordered Mr. Peleg to return Eitan’s Israeli passport, which he did not do. “I can assume that with the passport, Grandpa was able to evade border controls and take the boy to Israel,” Simbari said.
Mr Peleg’s lawyers, Eitan’s mother’s father, Tal Peleg, rejected the kidnapping claims, saying in a statement that the boy “was never deprived of his personal liberty”. They claimed that Mr Peleg had not breached a court order, because he had never been formally notified that the child could not leave the country.
“Eitan’s state of health worries the maternal family, which has always been kept in the dark by doctors and courts that have hindered the maternal family’s involvement,” lawyers said in a statement. “For these reasons, his grandfather decided to subject him to the necessary medical checks in Israel.”