AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — A premature baby taken away by his parents from a Paris hospital was found alive with them in an Amsterdam hotel Friday, four days after their disappearance which sparked a cross-border search, officials said.
"Santiago's parents were found in a hotel in the Amsterdam region of the Netherlands. The baby was with them. He is alive and has had medical treatment," Eric Mathais, chief prosecutor in the Seine-Saint-Denis department north of Paris, said in a statement.
Amsterdam police said they "today arrested a man and a woman in a hotel in the center of Amsterdam on suspicion of having kidnapped their premature baby," in a message on X.
"The baby is currently hospitalized in order to receive the care he needs."
The child was born eight weeks premature and required round-the-clock care.
French authorities had issued European arrest warrants for the parents.
Late on Monday evening — just 17 days after his birth — Santiago's parents aged 23 and 25 took him from the neonatal unit in the Robert Ballanger hospital in Aulnay-sous-Bois, northeast of Paris.
Authorities appealed to the public for information with a nationwide kidnapping alert.
They later said the pair had fled with the baby to neighboring Belgium.
Mathais said the motive for their flight was not yet known but that it was likely the parents feared they could lose custody of the baby.
One man, a male minor and a woman linked to the parents were arrested on Tuesday morning in Seine-Saint-Denis and charged in connection with the baby's removal.
Prosecutors said Friday the two males remained in custody after they "acknowledged accompanying the couple and their infant as they fled to Belgium," prosecutors said Thursday.