Russian 'tug of love' mother sent to France to stand trial

MOSCOW, May 27 (RIA Novosti) - Irina Belenkaya, the Russian woman involved in a custody battle with her estranged French husband over their daughter, was handed over to French police in Hungary on Wednesday and put on a plane to France, her lawyer said.

Belenkaya was arrested on April 13 in Hungary attempting to take her three-year-old daughter Elise across the border into Ukraine. The child has returned to France with her father, Jean-Michel Andre.

The couple has been embroiled in a bitter custody battle resulting in Elise being "kidnapped" back and forth three times in the past two years. Andre was awarded custody by a French court after their divorce in 2007.

"At 4:00 a.m. [02:00 GMT] today, police arrived and took Irina to the airport where she was handed over to French representatives. She is currently on her way to Paris," Hungarian lawyer Robert Friedman told RIA Novosti.

Upon her arrival in the French capital, Belenkaya will go through the necessary legal procedures at a prosecutor's office before being sent by train to Aix-en-Provence, in southern France, to stand trial.

The French court is looking at three options in the Belenkaya case: to release her; to release her under judicial control, meaning that she will have to appear at police station regularly; or to jail her.

A local prosecutor's aide, Pascal Guinot, said earlier that the court is likely to release Belenkaya under judicial control "with certain obligations in line with the law" and could allow her to return to Russia.

In Russia, she has an older daughter Sasha, who lives with Belenkaya's common-law husband.