A French woman and her partner were remanded to custody Saturday after being charged in Portugal with abandoning her two young sons.
The children, brothers aged 3 and 5, were found Tuesday walking along a road near Alcácer do Sal, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of Lisbon. They were carrying backpacks containing food, water and a change of clothes but had no identification. A passerby and his wife took the boys to a nearby police station.
Rescuers said the children told them they had been blindfolded and led into a wooded area under the pretense of playing a game. When the boys removed the blindfolds they could not find their mother or the family car, according to Portuguese media reports.
Portuguese authorities said the family lived in Colmar in eastern France. The children’s father, no longer living with the mother, reported the mother and boys missing on May 11, prompting French authorities to issue a Europe-wide alert.
Police arrested the mother and her current partner, both French nationals, at a café in Fátima on Thursday. They were brought before an investigating judge, Antonio Fialho, in Setúbal. Following a two-day hearing that ended Saturday, the judge ordered both into pretrial detention.
The pair have been charged with child endangerment and abandonment. Prosecutors say they are suspected of causing grievous bodily harm and abandoning the children; the man faces an additional charge of aggravated assault against one of the boys. The mother is 41 and the partner is 55.
Editor’s note: DW follows the German press code, which seeks to protect the privacy of suspects and victims and therefore does not publish full names of those involved.