- James Gregory & Judith Moritz, Northern England Correspondent
- bbc news
Video: Alex Batty reunites with grandma and tells The Sun what she did in the years she was missing
Police say they have launched a criminal investigation into child abduction charges for 17-year-old Alex Batty, who disappeared while on holiday in Spain when he was 11 years old.
Officers from Greater Manchester Police are interviewing Alex after he returned from France.
Police previously said they could not confirm the details of the investigation until Alex gave a statement.
The teenager, from Oldham, was spotted walking in the French Pyrenees.
Last week, six years after he went missing, a delivery driver came to pick him up after spotting him on a road near Toulouse on a rainy early morning.
His mother and grandfather, Melanie and David Batty, left Greater Manchester with Alex for a pre-arranged week-long holiday to Marbella, Spain, on 30 September 2017.
He was last seen at the port of Malaga on October 8, 2017, when he was due to return to the UK.
Alex’s grandmother, Susan Caruana, told the BBC in 2018 that she believed Alex’s mother and grandfather took him to live in a spiritual community in Morocco.
She said at the time they were exploring a different lifestyle and didn’t want Alex to go to school.
It is known that since that time Alex lived in a remote valley in the Pyrenees and traveled from place to place in a kind of itinerant commune.
This region at the foot of the Pyrenees is known for attracting people looking for a new lifestyle.
Alex was picked up by his family at Toulouse Airport and flew back to the UK last Saturday.
In an interview with The SunHe said he lied about the details of his escape, including how long he had been walking, saying he was “trying to protect my mother and grandfather, but I know they’re going to get caught anyway.”
“I never got lost. I knew exactly where I was going,” he told the tabloid, explaining that during the two-day trip, he first pretended to ask for directions and drove to the town of Quillan, then headed to Toulouse. I explained that it was a hiking trip.
He said living in Europe was like a vacation at first, but gradually became more difficult as he started growing up.
“The first few years in Spain were really a vacation. I spent most of my days reading, painting, going to the beach, doing whatever I wanted,” he said.
“That wasn’t until I was about 14 when I started… a lot of construction work, demolition work, painting walls, renovation work, etc. I had a social life that didn’t exist.
“I started weighing the pros and cons of each ‘lifestyle’ and after a few months realized that the UK was definitely the way forward.”
He wanted to tell his mother and grandfather, “It’s a shame that we’re leaving, but it was necessary for our future.”
“I want to tell them I love them,” he added. [I’m] I’m happy – very happy, in fact. ”
