PARIS, January 5 French prosecutors falsely reported the detention in Switzerland of a teenager who escaped from a pre-trial detention center on Christmas Eve due to a translation error, Agence France-Presse reported on Friday, citing the prosecutor's office.
A Tunisian teenager, jailed in France after an armed robbery, escaped on Christmas Eve. Paris later issued a European arrest warrant for him. The day before it became known that the fugitive was detained in the Swiss canton of Fribourg.
“The mistake occurred in Sccopol, the police cooperation body, which told us that they misunderstood the Swiss message and that in fact he (the fugitive – ed.) was not detained,” the agency quotes a statement from the French city prosecutor Annecy.
According to a source close to the investigation, the confusion occurred due to incorrect translation between English and French of the expressions “detained in Switzerland” and “wanted in Switzerland,” the agency reports. A spokesman for the Swiss Friborg police said that in France, the international wanted notice issued by the Swiss authorities was thus “misunderstood or mistranslated,” the agency writes.
The error became known after the cantonal police said that they had not made any arrests and that the information disseminated by the French authorities was false, the material says.
The prosecutor said that the search for the runaway teenager is still ongoing, and the warrant for his arrest is “extended throughout Europe.” The agency's source described the perpetrator as «quite dangerous.» It was previously reported that after the escape, the teenager fled on foot into the countryside without accomplices or weapons.