Ivory Coast boy smuggled to Spain inside suitcase

The boy had travelled from Ivory Coast and had

planned to enter Spain

An eight-year-old boy has been smuggled into
Spain from Morocco inside a suitcase, Spanish police
say.
The boy, Abou, was found inside the case being
carried by a 19-year-old woman into Ceuta, a
Spanish enclave next to Morocco, on Thursday.
When police opened the case, they found the boy in
a "terrible state", a spokesman for the Guardia
Civil told AFP.
The boy, from Ivory Coast, is now in the care of
authorities in Ceuta.
The Spanish newspaper El Pais reported (in
Spanish) that the 19-year-old is not related to
the boy , and was paid by his father to carry the
suitcase.
The boy's father lives in the Canary Islands and
had hoped to be reunited with his son, El Pais said.
The Spanish news agency Efe said the boy's father,
also named Abou, had travelled back to Ivory Coast
to pick him up, having moved to Gran Canaria in
2013.
The father then reportedly paid the Moroccan
courier to carry the suitcase. A police spokesman
told Efe: "She seemed to hesitate, and it looked as
though she didn't want to come through the
border.
"At first we thought that there could be drug
packages, but gradually discovered that it was a
human body."
The boy's father travelled across the border an
hour-and-a-half after his son. At that point, Efe
said, he was detained by border guards.
Fenced off
Ceuta and another Spanish enclave, Melilla, sit on
Morocco's Mediterranean coast, and are each
surrounded on three sides by Morocco.
Another photo after the cut