PARIS, May 18 — Malian singer Rokia Traore has flown home, flouting a ban issued by a French court which was to hand her over to Belgium over a child custody dispute, her lawyer said yesterday.

The singer and guitarist was arrested in March on a European arrest warrant when she arrived from Bamako at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport.

This followed a Belgian court ruling last year ordering her to return her five-year-old daughter to the child's Belgian father, from whom Traore is separated.

A Paris court subsequently ruled that she could be extradited but allowed her conditional release.

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“Back in Bamako. The quest for justice continues,” Traore said on her Facebook page on Tuesday in a post that was only spotted yesterday by the French daily Le Parisien.

In a post dated Friday, Traore, who flew back to Mali on a private flight, claimed not to be “a terrorist.”

“This is a mother in a desperate plight who is afraid that her child will be torn from her,” her lawyer Kenneth Feliho told AFP. “That is why she left for Mali where she lives.”

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Traore is appealing the decision of the Belgian court granting full custody to her former partner. According to her lawyer, a decision in the Mali courts had accorded custody to the singer.

An award-winning musician, Traore is also known for her advocacy work for refugees, and was made a UN ambassador for refugees in 2016. — AFP