Abducted A'dam girl's dad to be prosecuted in Netherlands

The Public Prosecution Service wants to start prosecuting the father of kidnapped Amsterdam girl Inisiya Hemani within two months, the Prosecutor said on Monday during the continuation of the trial against five men and a woman suspected of involvement in the young girl's abduction, AD reports.

The then 2-year-old Insiya was forcibly taken from her grandmother's apartment in September 2016 and then handed over to her father. Hemani took her to India, where they both still reside. In October last year, the Amsterdam court postponed the trial against the six suspected abductors so that the Prosecutor could make a final attempt to question Hemani as a witness. That was unsuccessful.

The lawyers representing the suspects want the trial to be postponed again, so that the Prosecutor can again try to get a statement out of Hemani. According to the lawyers, the case can not continue without his statement as he is suspected of organizing the abduction.

The Prosecutor wants the case to be settled. If the court rules against the suspects, the Prosecutor wants to sue Hemani. In that case he will be tried in absentia, as there seems to be no chance of him coming to the Netherlands.

Since Insiya's abduction in 2016, the now 5-year-old girl has become a plaything for legal proceedings in the Netherlands and India. According to her father's Indian lawyers, the court in India ruled on appeal that the girl should stay in India. The Indian court considers her mother Nadia Rashid, not her father, to be the abductor of the toddler.

In March a Dutch court revoked Hemani's custody of his daughter. The court shared the opinion of the Child Protection Board, which raised concerns about Insiya's development. There are "major concerns about her emotional development", the court said in its ruling. "Apart from her father, nobody knows how the minor is doing, what she is being told and what all this is doing to her."