GOTLAND, Sweden (WordNews.org) June 15, 2012 –The parents of a 10-year-old home-schooled boy that was abducted by the government three years ago are fit, a Swedish court has ruled.

The court will not terminate the parents’ rights, according to Alliance Defense Fund, which acted as advisers to the parents, along with the Home School Legal Defense Association.

The court ruled it could not ignore the unanimous and extensive testimony of first-hand accounts of friends, family, and others that Domenic Johansson’s parents, Christer and Annie, were properly caring for him prior to Swedish authorities seizing him in 2009, ADF said.

“The government shouldn’t abduct and imprison children simply because it doesn’t like home schooling,” said ADF Legal Counsel Roger Kiska. “We encourage Swedish authorities to release Domenic to his parents in light of the court’s ruling, and we hope the European Court of Human Rights will reconsider its recent rejection of Domenic’s case in light of the Swedish court’s determination. This family’s human rights have been unimaginably violated.”

HSLDA Director of International Relations Mike Donnelly Swedish officials’ action “a grotesque abuse of their human rights. Dominic has not been returned home yet, but we have every hope that he will be soon.”

ADF said Swedish authorities forcibly removed Domenic from a plane he had boarded with his parents in June 2009. ADF said the officials did not have a warrant nor did they charge the Johanssons with any crime. The officials seized the child because he was home-schooled, even though home schooling was legal in Sweden at the time he was taken into custody.

In December 2009, a Swedish court ruled in Johansson v. Gotland Social Services that the government was within its rights to seize the child, ADF said. ADF and HSLDA attorneys filed a lawsuit, Johansson v. Sweden, with the European Court of Human Rights in June 2010 over the matter.

That court recently declined to hear the case even after additional submissions from ADF and HSLDA attorneys, but the latest ruling  that Domenic’s mother and father are suitable to exercise parental rights over their son brings new hope that the child will be returned home, ADF said.