• English Site
• > SPIEGEL Blog

Chipping the Kids

French Babies Tagged for Protection from Kidnappers

Baby trafficking has become a high-profile problem in France, and a hospital hit by two cases of infant kidnapping wants to put electronic wristbands on newborns.

REUTERS

France wants to tackle the booming trade in babies by tagging them.

Electronic wrist or ankle bands may sound like a high-tech way to monitor criminals on probation, but now a French hospital wants to put the digital shackles on a different demographic -- babies at risk of kidnapping.

Starting in March 2007, babies born in the Le Raincy-Montfermeil hospital in Paris will wear electronic wristbands, the hospital announced on Tuesday. Each wristband will communicate with its own alarm box, which is not attached to the child. As soon as the wristband moves outside a designated area -- or someone tampers with the box -- the alarm goes off.

The boxes will carry the baby's name, date of birth and a unique serial number. They'll be light and compact, weighing no more than 20 grams (0.795 ounces) together with the band. The hospital will start with 40 alarm sets, which parents will have the right to refuse.

A plague of kidnappings

The hospital's maternity ward hosts 2,000-2,300 births per year, but it's suffered two cases of infant kidnapping over the past five years. Officials also plan to install surveillance cameras and limit access to the ward. But infant kidnapping has become such a black-market business in France that another hospital in Le Havre plans to install a similar tagging system for up to €200,000 ($260,500).

On Monday a court outside Paris opened a baby-trafficking trial involving a ring of 56 mostly Bulgarian defendants. They're accused of bringing impoverished pregnant women to France from Bulgaria, then selling on their newborns to childless French couples, and keeping most of the money.

The case centers on 22 babies who were sold for €3,500 - 7,000 apiece ($4,500 - 9,100) between 2003 and 2005. After police busted the gang, the children went to foster care; now most of them have been returned to the families that bought them. Some couples have started proceedings to adopt the children legally.

mkp/ap/afp

For reasons of data protection and privacy, your IP address will only be stored if you are a registered user of Facebook and you are currently logged in to the service. For more detailed information, please click on the "i" symbol.

Post to other social networks:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•