Adou, the Ivory Coast ‘suitcase boy’ found inside luggage at a border crossing between Spain and Morocco, has been granted a one-year residency permit by the Spanish government.
The eight-year-old remains in the care of child-protection authorities in the Spanish north African enclave of Ceuta, two weeks after the security scanner image of a small boy in a foetal position inside a trolley suitcase was shared around the world.
His father, Ali Ouattara, originally from Ivory Coast but who has lived in the Canary Islands for the past nine years, said he did not know his son would be smuggled across the border that way. Mr Ouattara is in custody in Ceuta accused of human trafficking.
Mr Ouattara’s story is that he wanted Adou to come to join his family in Spain. But when he applied for family reunion permission, he found that his monthly income fell €51 (£36) short of the €1,331 minimum amount considered necessary for a family of four.
The Ouattaras have a daughter living with them in the Canaries, according to his lawyer, Juan Isidro Fernández, who spoke to the newspaper El País.
Mr Fernández said that Ouattara paid intermediaries in Ivory Coast between €5,000 and €6,000 to obtain a visa for Adou. When his son did not arrive on the plane to Madrid, the father said he received calls saying the boy would be flown to Casablanca, Morocco, and would have to enter Spain from there.
Father and son were supposedly separated near the Ceuta border. Mr Ouattara has told a Spanish judge he had no idea Adou would be smuggled inside a bag.
Adou, who has been visited in Ceuta by his mother, Lucille, will remain in the care of the authorities until DNA tests confirm that the Ouattaras are indeed his parents.
“We are convinced that the DNA tests will not surprise us and will prove the paternal and maternal link because we have even seen photos [of Adou] with his parents,” the director of Ceuta’s social services for minors, Antonia Palomo, told EFE news agency.
“Adou is fine, happy, perfectly integrated with his roommate and living the whole thing as if it were a dream or a sort of adventure.”