AN ONLINE petition calling for the release of an Ivory Coast national in the Canary Islands jailed for 'human trafficking' after his son was smuggled into Spain in a suitcase has gone viral.
The page on change.org had netted 45,000 signatures within its first two days.
Its authors believe charging 43-year-old Alí Abou Outtara with human smuggling means equating him to unscrupulous mafia-style organisations who ship migrants to Spain and exploit them, when in his case, he was acting in desperation after Spanish authorities refused to let his eight-year-old boy live with him.
And Alí Abou had no idea his little boy was going to be packed into a suitcase in the foetal position when he paid 19-year-old Moroccan woman Fatima Y. to smuggle him into the Spanish-owned city-province of Ceuta on the northern coast of Africa.
This is what his wife, Lucie Ouattara, 38, says.
"I haven't slept since I saw the image of my son on the customs scanner at the border of Ceuta in the news - I want to talk to my husband and son, and I want Alí to tell me what really happened, but it seems he is not allowed to ring me and I cannot get through to him.
"This is so hard for me and for the rest of the family, I'm devastated," Lucie says.
She was pregnant with little Abou when, in 2007, Alí travelled to the Canary Islands on a jerry-built raft, as thousands of Africans attempt to do almost daily to get into Spain, Italy, Malta and Greece.
Unlike many others, Alí's venture allowed him to turn his life around: he has been a legal resident in Puerto del Rosario on the island of Fuerteventura for nearly eight years and has a permanent, full-time job in a laundrette's.
He applied for his wife and three children to join him once he was settled.
Lucie and their 11-year-old daughter were allowed to live with him as legal residents, but to be able to bring their eldest son and the youngest, eight-year-old Abou, Alí would need to be earning a net €2,500 a month since otherwise he was considered not to be taking home enough money to support all three, meaning two of them would become 'a burden on the State'.
For Alí's daughter, wife and youngest son to join him, he would need to be earning €1,331 per month to be considered to have the necessary funds to avoid the little boy being 'a drain on public resources'.
Alí's wages fall short of this figure by just €41 a month, says his lawyer.
This was the only reason his application to bring his son into Spain was denied.
Despite repeated appeals, Spanish authorities refused to budge.
"As parents, we simply could not leave our children behind, with the situation as it is in the Ivory Coast," says Lucie, referring to the ongoing crisis following the Second Civil War, the result of a military coup - still lingering even though French armed forces are helping the transition to democracy - high crime levels and the threat of Ebola.
"For this reason, we tried many times to bring Abou here legally, but they kept turning us down - my husband has not stopped working to get them to agree.
"I spend several months of the year in the Ivory Coast looking after Abou, because he is anaemic and has had malaria.
"Alí trusted the woman he paid at the Ceuta border - he did not know she was going to try to bring Abou into Spain in a suitcase.
"I just give thanks to God that my son is alive, because he could have died - I never imagined I'd see him like this.
"If Alí had known this was how he was going to be brought into Spain, he would never have agreed to it. I know him, I've been married to him for 20 years, and he wouldn't. He's an excellent father and loves his children."
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com