Alex Batty expected back in UK six years after vanishing on holiday in Spain

More than 2,200 days after being abducted while on holiday in Spain, Alex Batty was expected to return home on Saturday night to rebuild a life in Greater Manchester that has been on hold since 2017.

Batty vanished on a trip to Andalucia six years ago with his mother and grandfather, sparking an international hunt by police for his whereabouts.

On Saturday Batty was due to be back in Oldham with his legal guardian, grandmother Susan Caruana, who said she had never given up hope of being reunited with the 17-year-old.

The teenager boarded a plane for London on Saturday, the Toulouse public prosecutor told AFP. He boarded a KLM flight to the British capital, via Amsterdam, “accompanied by British police officers”, said magistrate Antoine Leroy.

A statement from Greater Manchester police read: “We can confirm that arrangements are being made to return Alex to the UK as soon as is appropriately possible.”

For Batty, his return to the north of England capped a dramatic few days since a delivery driver spotted a blond-haired figure tramping up a rain-lashed remote mountain road in the French Pyrenean foothills on Thursday morning.

As he approached, Fabien Accidini noticed a skateboard tucked under Batty’s arm, its owner surprisingly young and a little dishevelled.

Only when Accidini Googled the boy’s name and saw a picture of the smiling child reported missing six years earlier, did he realise that this would be the end of an international search.

Batty’s immediate future will involve attempting to restart his life in Greater Manchester, having spent years living a nomadic life in “spiritual communities” with his mother and grandfather.

French officials said Batty decided to leave this lifestyle only when his mother said she wanted to go to Finland. When found by Accidini, the teenager had been walking alone for four days and nights.

Batty turns 18 on 13 February, facing adulthood with no qualifications and no recent schooling. French prosecutors say the teenager is in good health and does not appear to have been abused in the years since his abduction.

Once he returns home, Alex will finally be looked after by his maternal grandmother, to whom the British justice system entrusted his custody before his mother allegedly abducted him in Spain.

Yet as he prepares for his new life, several questions remain, including how did such a long-running abduction investigation involving a child appear to make such little evident progress before his chance finding last week?

Some UK officers have subsequently compared the case with the intensive policing efforts to trace Madeleine McCann, who has been missing since May 2007, although others point out that there are obvious differences between the cases.

Another pressing question is the current whereabouts of Batty’s mother, Melanie. Although she is yet to be found, the Toulouse prosecutor yesterday suggested she may have travelled to Finland.

And what happened to his grandfather, David? Reports suggest Batty told police he may have died six months ago but it is unclear where he might have been buried.

At the time of Batty’s disappearance, Caruana said she believed Melanie and David had taken him abroad and “got involved with a cult”.

The episode has shone a spotlight on the vast mountain wilderness of France’s Aude department where Batty was found last week, and the communities that live there.

Anne-Marie Charvet, a former prefect of Aude, said more than 10 years ago that the department was becoming a haven for what she termed “micro-groups” specialising in alternative medicine – like reflexology or energy therapy – and other methods she said flirted with charlatanism but were “likely to attract psychologically fragile people”.

Simone Risch, president of the Toulouse group Infos Sectes (Cult Info), said Aude was often a haven for those wishing to live on the margins of modern society, particularly conspiracy theorists such as One Nation.

Local officials describe what they call “esoteric phenomena” emerging in the region, including the Order of the Solar Temple, which claimed its authority descended from the grand masters of the Order of the Temple, a medieval order of knights that was suppressed in the 14th century.

According to the French body Miviludes (the interministerial mission for vigilance and the combat against cult organisations), around 70,000 children are living in cults in France, where such organisations are believed to have around 500,000 members.

However, French prosecutors have dismissed the suggestion that Alex was in a cult, instead suggesting he was part of an “itinerant spiritual community”.

On Friday Antoine Leroy, assistant public prosecutor in Toulouse, said Batty seemed “very intelligent” and “calm” but added he was certain there would be “psychological consequences.”

It is the nature of these consequences that will determine how smoothly Batty swaps his old life in the brooding wilderness of the Pyrenees for a future among the redbrick terraces of Oldham.