CHAD:Six French aid workers were sentenced to eight years' hard labour yesterday for trying to kidnap more than 100 children from Chad, claiming they were Darfur war orphans.
The six members of the French group Zoe's Ark were arrested in October, when they illegally tried to fly 103 children aged between one and 10 to France to live with European families who had each paid thousands of euro. The United Nations established that most of the children were not orphans from Sudan's Darfur region, but came from families in neighbouring Chad. The six French citizens were charged with child kidnapping and fraud, but denied any wrongdoing.
After four days of hearings, the judges in the Chadian capital N'Djamena announced their verdict yesterday, after the country's chief prosecutor urged the court to impose sentences of between seven and 11 years' hard labour.
During the trial, the group, led by firefighter Eric Breteau, insisted they set out to save orphans. They blamed their intermediaries for misleading them over the children's identities. A Sudanese refugee told the court that the aid workers tricked him, saying they planned to educate children at a centre in Chad.
State lawyer Philippe Houssine said the sentences requested by the prosecution were justified because the Zoe's Ark leaders had shown no remorse.
"On the contrary, he [ Breteau] displays an arrogant, insolent attitude, which means this is a person who is ready to do it again if asked," he told reporters.
Before the concluding arguments yesterday, Breteau told the court that he wanted to give Sudanese children a better future. If Zoe's Ark had been lied to about the children, "we are sincerely sorry", he said. There is widespread expectation that a diplomatic deal between Paris and N'Djamena could soon return them to France. -