The judicial inquiry into the disappearance of little Emile in July in a hamlet in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence has been extended to the criminal acts of kidnapping and forcible confinement, without this decision resulting from any particular progress in the investigation, a we learned Monday, August 21 from a judicial source.
By a supplementary indictment at the end of July, the prosecution of Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône) requested to “switch to this criminal qualification”, with in particular the kidnapping of a 15-year-old minor and kidnapping, said Emmanuel Merlin , deputy prosecutor, confirming initial information from the Parisian.
This decision “is not linked to a development in the investigation” into the still unexplained disappearance of the boy from his vacation spot, but “this procedural framework offers more flexibility” to the investigators, underlined the magistrate, referring to a decision “purely technical”. The investigation had initially been opened in flagrance by the prosecution of Digne-les-Bains, then entrusted to two investigating judges from Aix, for “search for causes of worrying disappearance”.
“All avenues remain under consideration”
Emile, 2.5 years old, was seen for the last time on Saturday July 8, at 5.15 p.m., alone, in a street in Haut-Vernet, a tiny hamlet of 25 inhabitants where his family owns a house. Originally from La Bouilladisse, in the Bouches-du-Rhône, the little boy had just started his summer vacation with his maternal grandparents.
Since then, no trace of the child has been found, despite the mobilization of very significant human and material resources, civilian volunteers, law enforcement, search dogs, drones, telephone records. “All avenues remain under consideration, none being neither excluded nor privileged”, had assured the public prosecutor, Rémy Avon, at the time of the opening of the judicial investigation, on July 18, evoking “one of the most major judicial search operations ever conducted”.
