Malian singer Rokia Traore to be released from Belgian prison, news agency reports

Malian singer Rokia Traore, arrested in Rome last year over an international child custody dispute and later handed over to Belgium, will be released from a Belgian prison on Wednesday, local news agency Belga reported quoting her lawyers.

Reuters could not immediately reach Traore's representatives or confirm the release with local authorities.

Traore, 50, is one of Africa's best-known vocalists and, from 2016 to 2018, was a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR.

(FILES) A Belgian court on December 23, 2024, postponed the trial of Malian singer Rokia Traore to January 8, 2025, over an outstanding two-year prison sentence handed down in a child custody dispute. The 50-year-old singer and guitarist was sentenced in absentia by a Brussels court last year on charges of parental abduction in a long-running fight with Belgian playwright Jan Goossens, the father of her daughter -- now aged nine. Photo by BERTRAND LANGLOIS / AFP

Italian authorities handed the Malian singer to Belgium last November after Italy's highest court rejected her appeal.

In October 2023, she was sentenced in absentia to two years in prison in Belgium in connection with the battle over custody of her daughter.

She was first arrested in France in 2020 on a Belgian warrant after failing to follow a court order connected to the singer's dispute with her estranged Belgian former partner, Jan Goossens, over custody of their daughter.

But months after she was conditionally released, she flew to Mali on a private flight, defying orders not to leave France until her extradition case was processed. Her daughter lives in Mali.