Kidnapped teenager Alex Batty will be reunited with his grandmother in Oldham this weekend, French authorities have said.
The 17-year-old, who is believed to have spent the last six years living off the grid in Spain and France with his mum and her father, was found near the French city of Toulouse on Wednesday.
The chief public prosecutor in Toulouse, Antoine Leroy, told reporters on Friday that Alex will be flown back to the UK on Saturday or Sunday ‘at the latest’.
Mr Leroy revealed startling new details of the account Alex gave to French investigators after he was taken into care.
The boy is said to have travelled for four days on foot after fleeing a ‘spiritual community’ in the French Pyrenees, hoping to reach a town with a British embassy.
He walked ‘exclusively at night’ and slept during the day, surviving by scavenging from ‘whatever he could find in fields and gardens’, the French prosecutor added.
Alex told investigators he had spent two years living with no fixed address in the mountainous region.
With his mum and granddad, he would regularly move between locations described as ‘large houses’ where they would live with several other families.
The other families were ‘never the same people’ but always shared the ‘same way of living’, said Mr Leroy.
The trio were said to have lived the same way in Spain, where they spent the four years prior to crossing the French border, as well as Morocco, where Alex’s mum took him in 2014 when he was eight years old.
The boy described living off food grown in allotments and a lifestyle with a heavy emphasis on ‘meditation’ and spiritual beliefs such as reincarnation.
His mum, Melanie, and granddad David, were said to have been ‘obsessed’ with solar panels, taking a set with them as their only possessions besides vegetable-growing equipment.
According to French authorities, Alex said his granddad David died around six months ago, and that he took part in a ‘meditation ceremony’ to mark his death.
The boy decided this situation ‘had to stop’ when his mum told him she was moving them to Finland, Mr Leroy continued.
The prosecutor said: ‘It’s possible that the mother has gone to Finland as she planned, and this is why [Alex] left the community.’
French police could not identify a ‘specific sect or movement’ and say the trio may not have been part of an organised group at all.
But Mr Leroy said they will eventually ‘dig a little deeper’ into places where he might have been, since their community ‘seems like a sect’.
Greater Manchester Police, who believe Alex was abducted, recently said they wanted to speak to Alex’s mum and granddad in connection with his disappearance.
While there is currently no criminal investigation in France, local police want to know ‘how a young person was able to live in this way under the radar’.
In 2018, Alex’s grandmother, Susan Caruana described the community which her grandson was living in as a ‘cult’.
In a press conference on Friday, Assistant Chief Constable Chris Sykes pushed back on ‘speculation’ over the boy’s recent whereabouts, adding: ‘We have no detail of where he’s been. We want to speak to Alex.’
ACC Sykes told reporters: ‘The young man and Alex’s grandmother spoke on a video call last night and whilst she is content that this is indeed Alex, we obviously have further checks to do when he returns to the United Kingdom.’
‘Alex and his family remain our focus and we still have some work to do in establishing the full circumstances surrounding his disappearance and where he has been in all those years.
‘I can only imagine the emotions they have experienced as a family throughout this ordeal.’
‘I would ask that they be granted privacy as they come to terms with what’s happened and they try to move forward together as a family to come to terms with what’s happened.’
This is a developing news story, more to follow soon… Check back shortly for further updates.
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