Sweden halts abandoned girl's deportation

A Swedish appeals court reversed a decision to deport a toddler abandoned by her Algerian mother and allegedly abused by her stepfather, suffering brain damage. Deportation had been ordered for the child, Hadile, 2, by the Migration Board. That decision was reversed by the Migration Court of Appeals, which said it was "not in the child's best interest under the current circumstances to deport Haddile to France." Haddile was abandoned in Sweden by her mother, who is Algerian but has French citizenship, 20 days after her birth at a hospital in Lund, The Local.se reported. The girl's stepfather was to care for her but he was accused of abuse after Haddile was admitted to a hospital with brain damage when she was 4 months old, the report said. Haddile was then taken in by foster parents who now say they are willing to adopt her. The Migration Board had said the girl should be sent to France in an effort to reunite her with her mother. Tens of tens of thousands of Swedes signing a petition protesting the deportation.