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Boy, 8, found inside suitcase at Spain border crossing

May 8, 2015 / 12:24 PM EDT / CBS/AP

Spain: 8-year-old boy smuggled inside suitcase

MADRID -- A Spanish court has ordered the detention of a man from the Ivory Coast who allegedly hid his 8-year-old son inside a closed suitcase in an attempt to smuggle the child into Europe.

A police statement said guards stopped a 19-year-old Moroccan woman who looked nervous as she waited in line Thursday at the land border crossing in Ceuta, a Spanish city enclave in North Africa.

The Spanish Civil Guard released an X-ray image May 7, 2015 taken with a border scanner showing an eight-year-old Ivorian boy hidden in a suitcase smuggled from Morocco across the border into the Spanish governed territory Ceuta in North Africa. Spanish Gaurdia Civil/HO

When the guards put her suitcase through a scanner, they detected the boy curled up inside.

A spokesman for the Civil Guard police force told AFP that the boy was "in a terrible state."

The Civil Guard released this photo May 7, 2015 of an eight-year-old Ivorian boy found hidden in a suitcase smuggled from Morocco across the border into the Spanish governed territory Ceuta in North Africa. Spanish Gaurdia Civil/HO

Border officers detained the woman and, later, the child's father at the same border crossing.

A Ceuta magistrate on Friday ordered the father held on charges of human rights abuse.

According to AFP, each year thousands of migrants make desperate attempts to enter Ceuta. A Moroccan man was found in a shipping container earlier this week in the port of Melilla.

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