The boy, Alex Batty, now 17, was found on Wednesday, December 13th, close to the town of Revel, south-east of Toulouse, regional prosecutors said.

“We have confirmed his identity and he will now return to Britain,” Toulouse prosecutors said in a statement to AFP.

Greater Manchester Police said that the boy, who is from Oldham, had left the UK in September 2017 for a pre-agreed family holiday in Spain. At the time of his disappearance, enquiries led police to believing that the family may have tried to head to Melilla in Morocco from the Port of Malaga.

“This is a complex and long-running investigation, and we need to make further enquiries as well as putting appropriate safeguarding measures in place,” Manchester police said.

The BBC said the boy’s grandmother Susan Caruana, his legal guardian, had previously said she believed Alex’s mother and grandfather had taken him to live with a spiritual community to seek an alternative lifestyle.

Alex Batty was last seen in Spain on October 8th, 2017, the day they were expected to return home.

The BBC said the teenager is currently in a centre for minors in Toulouse, awaiting the arrival of British police and consular staff to return him to England.

“The mother and grandfather, who do not have parental guardianship of Alex, have not been located but remain wanted in connection with his disappearance,” the BBC said.

The boy’s grandmother, who is divorced from the grandfather, told the Sun newspaper she was thrilled he had been found.

She said: “I am so happy. I have spoken to him and he is well. He is currently with the authorities in France. It is such a shock.”

Regional French newspaper La Dépêche du Midi said he had been wandering for some four days in the mountainous area when he was found by student Fabien Accidini.

Accidini, 26, who delivers medicines to pharmacies in the area, said it was raining hard when he picked up Alex Batty on an isolated road in the early hours of the morning.

“I was on the road between Camon and Chalabre when I first came across this young man walking with a flashlight,” Accidini told La Dépêche. “He was [walking] in the rain, with a skateboard under his arm and a backpack. 

“Once I’d delivered my medication, I knew I’d have to take the same route again, so when I saw him again, I offered to give him a lift and drop him off wherever he wanted. He didn’t hesitate to get into my van.”

The young man initially told Accidini that his name was Zach, but soon revealed his real identity and said that he had left an itinerant spiritual community that had arrived in France some two years earlier.

“He said that his mother had kidnapped him when he was around 12,” the student told La Dépêche.

“Since then, he had lived in Spain in a luxury house with around 10 people. He would have arrived in France around 2021.”

He had lived with his mother in a “spiritual community” in France and had “no animosity towards her but wanted to go back to his grandmother”.

There was no immediate information on the whereabouts of the mother and grandfather and what legal proceedings they may face.