Mother on trial over masked men allegedly hired to kidnap her daughter

A RUSSIAN mother accused of hiring masked men to kidnap her own daughter has gone on trial in France.

The disappearance of three-year-old Elise Andre sparked an international hunt after she was grabbed from her father on a street in the French city of Arles by two men and a woman, all wearing balaclavas. The French father, Jean-Michel Andre, suffered multiple injuries during the kidnapping on 20 March, 2009.

Irina Belenkaya, then tried to take the child to Moscow by train, but was arrested in Hungary a month later. Elise, now seven, was returned to her father, while Belenkaya was taken back to France and released on bail. She is now on trial in Tarascon.

She denies hiring two men to abduct her daughter, claiming she “met them by chance in the street” as she was going to see her former husband and things “went accidentally wrong”.