Foreign man wanted by French police for kidnap of eight-year-old girl arrested in Langkawi

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian police have detained a French man wanted for the alleged kidnapping of an eight-year-old girl back in his homeland.

Rémy Daillet-Wiedeman is wanted in France for the alleged kidnapping of a girl named Mia in mid-April.

Bukit Aman Acting CID director Deputy Comm Datuk Dev Kumar said the suspect was arrested in Langkawi for having an expired visa.

"The suspect has been remanded for 14 days while we complete investigations under the Immigration Act.

"Once that is concluded we will suggest that he be deported," he said on Monday (May 31).

He said the suspect would be held in Langkawi for the duration of the remand order.

The Guardian reported on April 21 that French police had issued an international arrest warrant for a far-right conspiracy theorist living in Malaysia, whom they alleged helped organise the abduction of the eight-year-old girl in eastern France at the request of her mother.

Statements to police by suspects arrested in the case led public prosecutors there to believe Rémy Daillet-Wiedemann was "the main figure in their so-called 'movement', and played a role in the abduction".

The girl, Mia Montemaggi was found safe on May 18 with her mother, Lola, 28, in a disused factory in Switzerland, five days after she was taken from her grandmother's home in the eastern Vosges region by three men posing as child protection officers.

Lola Montemaggi, who lost custody of her daughter in January, was banned from seeing her.

She is suspected of having arranged her kidnapping and was arrested in Vaud, western Switzerland.

According to Le Parisien newspaper, Daillet-Wiedemann was banned from the centrist MoDem party in 2010 and has lived in Malaysia for several years.

He has said in videos that "scientifically useless" face masks should be banned and 5G networks destroyed.

Daillet-Wiedemann has also called for contrails – aircraft condensation trails that conspiracy theorists believe contain chemical or biological agents – to be banned and believed children in care had been stolen from their parents and must be returned.