A 53-year-old man has been arrested in Larnaca on suspicion of aiding and abetting the kidnapping of a 23-month-old child by his father, the police said on Thursday.

The man was arrested at 10.10pm on Wednesday evening, and was later taken to Limassol, where he remains in custody.

According to newspaper Phileleftheros, the man rented a vehicle and travelled in that vehicle with child’s father, a 29-year-old man, from near where the father had crossed into the British Dhekelia base from the north to the Limassol district village where his child and the child’s mother live.

Meanwhile, the mother’s lawyer, Ioannis Michalakis, told the same newspaper that the child’s father is a Turkish national, who had “constantly threatened her and seems to be involved in various situations”.

He said that the father and his accomplice “rented the vehicle [and] went to her house”, and that “he tried to drown her in the pool, while the other grabbed the baby, and they left together”.

The kidnapping took place on Wednesday morning at around 7.50am, with it believed that the child’s father travelled with the child to the north thereafter.