Malian singer Rokia Traore to be extradited to Belgium in child custody row

Malian singer Rokia Traore will be extradited from Italy to Belgium over an outstanding two-year prison sentence handed down in a child custody dispute, her lawyer said Thursday.

The singer and guitarist was sentenced in absentia by a Brussels court last year on charges of parental abduction.

She was arrested in Italy in June and challenged the extradition order, but a Rome court ruled Thursday "Rokia will have to be transferred to Belgium within 10 days from today", lawyer Maddalena Claudia Del Re told AFP.

Traore had been arrested in Paris in March 2020 on a European arrest warrant over a Belgian court ruling ordering her to return her daughter, now aged nine, to the child's Belgian father.

She defied a ban on leaving France and flew home to Mali several months later, before she could be sent to Belgium.

Daughter in Mali

A lawyer for the child's father said he had not had any contact with his daughter, who lives in Mali, since she turned four.

The lawyer said the father had offered to draw up a new custody agreement with Traore, validated by Malian and Belgian courts, to "find a way out of this nightmare and guarantee their child a future with two parents".

Beyond her feted music career, Traore is also known for her advocacy work for refugees, and was made a UN ambassador for refugees in 2015.