The Elise André incident is a tug-of-war of kidnappings of the three-year-old girl Elise André-Belenkaya (Russian: Элиза Андре Беленькая) in a dispute between her parents, father Jean-Michel André and mother Ирина Беленькая, over child custody during 2007–2009.
[1] The girl was abducted and moved across the border at least three times since parents' divorce in 2007.
The case of Elise is aggravated by the fact that Russia is not a signatory of the 1980 Hague convention on civil aspects of child abduction, used to resolve similar cases.
[2] The last kidnapping (by mother) was stopped in Nyíregyháza, Hungary in April 2009 and in May the Hungarian court decided that the mother be extradited to France[4] In 2012 the mother was facing a three-year suspended sentence from a French court in Tarascon for double abduction, in November 2007 and in March 2009.
[7] The Russian Ministry of Foreign affairs concluded that the decision of the French court had been balanced.