MOSCOW, May 15 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Investigation
Committee has launched criminal proceedings against a Finnish
national who is suspected of illegally taking his son out of
Russia, a committee spokesman said on Friday.
Paavo Salonen is being investigated on suspicion of
kidnapping his five-year-old son Anton, Vladimir Markin said,
adding that the boy's Russian mother had not given permission
for her son to leave the country.
The Russian foreign minister discussed the latest case
involving the kidnapping of a Russian child with his Finnish
counterpart on Thursday after it emerged the boy and his
father, whose visa had expired, spent several days in the
Finnish consulate in St. Petersburg before leaving the country.
"Taking the child out without his mother's consent was a
major violation of Russian law and criminally liable," a
Foreign Ministry statement read.
The case resembles a recent high-profile "tug of love"
custody battle between a French national and his estranged
Russian wife which resulted in the kidnapping of a 3-year-old
girl by her mother.
Jean-Michel Andre and Irina Belenkaya, who is in a
Hungarian jail awaiting extradition to France, have been
embroiled in a bitter dispute that led to their daughter,
Elise, being "kidnapped" back and forth three times in the past
two years.
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