A woman hid a child in her Air France carry-on while flying from Istanbul to Paris but was arrested at Charles de Gaulle Airport because the wiggly child was discovered by the cabin crew.
Another passenger noticed something moving in the bag and alerted the crew. said the
Independent.
"There was a cloth bag belonging to a female passenger who was sitting at the rear of the plane," a passenger named Vincent, 36, told the French website
Planet.fr. "She began to open the bag and another passenger sitting nearby saw something moving inside."
"He alerted the flight attendants who discovered a baby, aged between one and two years old," he said, per the Independent.
French media outlets reported that the woman had been attempting to adopt a Haitian girl, said
CNN. The Independent said authorities were trying to determine if the child was being smuggled into Europe by an illegal adoption ring.
A source at the Paris airport told
Agence France-Presse that the suspect, a French resident, was trying to adopt the child, who hailed from Haiti.
"She was apparently in the transit zone in Istanbul, and had crossed the customs checkpoint with the child, when she was prevented from boarding a flight with her," the source told AFP.
The source said that is when the woman hatched the plan to "hide the child in a bag to get aboard another flight, after buying a new ticket."
"Once on board, she placed the child at her feet, under a blanket, but the girl needed to go to the toilet and was noticed by other passengers," the source told AFP.
The woman was arrested upon her arrival in Paris while the child was taken to the custody by French authorities.
"An investigation is under way," an Air France spokesman told the Independent. "I can only say that the security checks are the responsibility of airports, in this case, Istanbul Ataturk."
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