In the alleged kidnapping of little Eitan, the only survivor of the cable car accident on Lake Maggiore in Italy, the boy’s aunt won another victory. The Tel Aviv District Court on Thursday evening rejected the maternal grandfather Shmuel Peleg’s appeal against a family court decision. The six-year-old is to be returned to Italy, the district court confirmed.
Eitan was entrusted to his aunt, who lived in Italy and who had been given custody of the child by the Italian authorities, and was then abducted to Tel Aviv by his grandfather. The court decided that the child should be returned to his hometown in Italy, where the boy had lived until the accident and the death of his parents. However, the child will not be able to return to Italy immediately. The grandfather still has the option of submitting another objection.
The Peleg family criticized the judgment. “Eitan is an Israeli and Jewish child, and his relatives would have liked him to grow up and be raised in Israel,” said family spokesman Gadi Solomon. The Peleg family lawyers are examining the possibility of appealing to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, the Tel Aviv District Court’s decision is on hold for seven days to allow an appeal to be lodged. In the meantime, Eitan will remain in Israel.
It took the three district court judges just three hours to examine the complaint against the ruling by family judge Iris Ilotovich Segal that Eitan was illegally brought to Israel by his grandfather in September under the Hague Convention and is forced to return to Italy. Everyone involved was present in the courtroom: from Shmuel Peleg, against whom the Pavia public prosecutor had applied for an international arrest warrant for the alleged kidnapping, to aunt Aya Biran Nirko. Esther Cohen Peleg, Shmuel’s maternal grandmother and ex-wife of the defendant Peleg, who is also under investigation in Italy on allegations of child abduction, was also admitted.