A French couple went on trial on Thursday accused of planning to ‘sacrifice’ their five-year-old son in the Moroccan desert.
The two music teachers from Carcans, near Bordeaux, were arrested in southern Spain in December 2023 before boarding a ferry to Tangiers.
They had recently sublet their apartment near the city of Bordeaux and left France in a new four-wheel-drive.
The Bordeaux prosecutor’s office had received a report from a relative a few days prior expressing concerns about comments made by the father.
The relative claimed the father had said he wanted to ‘sacrifice’ the child in the Sahara Desert because he believed he was ‘possessed’, the investigation showed.
Florian L., the father, denies ever having said that, his lawyer Audrey Boussillon said. ‘Never did he have the intention to harm his son in any way,’ she added.
The couple have vehemently rejected the charges of being part of a criminal gang and failing in their parental duties, their defence team has said.
The trial is to last one day and the verdict will likely be announced at a later date.
FILE PHOTO: A relative raised concerns about the father’s alleged comments days before the arrests. The father denied having made the comments
The attorney for the mother Marie L., Aurelie Filippi-Codaccioni, said the couple had been to Morocco two years earlier and had wanted to return for an ‘indefinite period’.
‘They had been there two years before and had loved it, hence the long-standing plan to return,’ the lawyer said.
But Merlene Labadie, representing the interests of the child, argued that ‘the mystical remarks and the inexplicable behavior of the couple’ had endangered their son.
The child was said to have spoken of ‘being cold, scared and removing the snake within us’ when found.
The Spanish Civil Guard said at the time the parents appeared to be suffering from ‘psychiatric problems’.
Two months before the arrests, during a storm, the father was found naked in the woods of a nearby town, Le Monde reported. He was hospitalised for two weeks.
Marie L.’s sister told the outlet at the time that Florian L. had ‘recently encountered health problems’ and pushed back on media reports as ‘exaggerated’.
‘While it is undeniable that he needs help, they make my sister and him out to be premeditated child murderers,’ she said.
The child is now in the custody of his maternal grandparents, lawyer Merlene Labadie said.
The grandparents ‘have done a lot of work to deconstruct all these ideas, so that he is no longer afraid of the outside world, of others’, she added.
The Bordeaux prosecutor’s office originally received the report from the female relative on December 19, 2023, two days before the couple were arrested.
The woman, who was characterised as a friend in earlier reports, said the father had said he was planning a journey to the Maghreb to undertake an initiation rite.
An investigation was opened a day later and the parents were ultimately imprisoned in Spain, Le Monde reported in January 2024.
A woman from Carcans said one of her friends was planning to sublet their house at the start of January.
‘One day, he told me that their house had been sealed off, and that they were wanted, he didn’t know why,’ she told the outlet.
‘Since he found out, he’s been completely shocked. Like all of us, by the way.’
FILE PHOTO: Carcans-plage in south-western France, on June 20, 2025
Mayor Patrick Meiffren said the couple opened the Music Education Center (CEM) school, teaching ‘up to 250’ children music.
He said: ‘Florian could sometimes get carried away. He could explode with anger but he would calm down after a few minutes and apologise.’
‘It was impossible to imagine that these two could one day be suspected of wanting to harm their child.’
Meiffren also said the couple were ‘well integrated into the village’, Le Figaro reported at the time of the arrests.
‘It’s all the more surprising since their child – who was home-schooled – was everything to them,’ he told Le Monde.
He described the parents as being ‘very attentive’.
