CHAD/FRANCE: Chad charges French and Spanish nationals with abduction. Official and unofficial reaction from France

Chad charges French and Spanish aid workers with abduction and fraud over a plan to fly African children to Europe. The French foreign ministry says while the workers have been charged, they have not yet been indicted. A family that was to have hosted one of the children reacts to the accusations. Chadian authorities charged nine French nationals on Tuesday (October 30) with abduction and fraud after they were detained trying to fly 103 children out of the country to go live with families in Europe, Chad's government said. The seven member Spanish crew of the charter plane used in the operation were also arrested and charged with being accessories to the crimes. Journalists who were allowed to see and film, but not talk to, the detained French and Spanish held in Abeche's law courts building, said they looked stressed, tired and dishevelled. "Article 286 of the Penal Code calls for a sentence of hard labour for 5 to 20 years, and for fraud, Article 308 provides for a period of imprisonment of between 6 months and 5 years and fines of 50-thousand to two million Chad francs," Abeche public prosecutor, Ahmat Daoud, told reporters. The accused include the president and other members of French organisation, Zoe's Ark, which has said it intended to help the children, not abduct them, and that it acted legally. In Paris, the French Foreign Ministry said although the group had been charged, it had not yet been formally indicted. "We understand that there were accusations levelled by the prosecutor but at present there's no decision on an indictment. It is up to an examining magistrate, in charge of the case, to decide," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Pascale Andreani, told reporters in Paris. But Andreani added there was also reason to believe not all the children in question were helpless orphans. Zoe's Ark has said the operation offered a better life to orphans from Sudan's war-torn Darfur region, many of whose people have fled over the border to camps in Chad. But some of the children have said their parents were still alive and they were lured from their villages on the Chad-Sudan border with offers of sweets and biscuits. The NGO, Medecins Sans Frontieres(Doctors Without Borders) says Zoe's Ark acted irresponsibly by not consulting and working with the Chad government and the United Nations, which runs the refugee camps in Chad. Rony Brauman, head of research for the "Medecins Sans Frontieres" foundation said the group's actions had made other NGO's work in the region more difficult by eroding trust. But he said French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, was also to blame for what happened. Brauman said Kouchner's fiery rhetoric helped contribute to the current situation. "The Foreign Minister, not the foreign ministry, has a strong moral responsibility. At the time, when he was an eminent, very public intellectual, he was speaking about genocide, extermination, the need for intervention, to send forces which would stop innocents being slaughtered... Little by little this created a situation where this kind of action was becoming not only possible but necessary." Laurent and Vincent Bardol, one of the French host families who paid thousand of euros to Zoes's Ark and with whom one or more of the children were to live, defended their involvement in the alleged child smuggling affair in Chad. "All these accusations are really baseless, and at no point did we believe that Zoe's Ark could be involved in orphan trafficking or these horrors we have heard about trafficking for reasons of pedeophilia, or even organ trafficking - it's becoming ridiculous," said Laurent. He added that they were not looking to adopt the children, but that their only interest was the safety and well-being of the children. "It was clear from the beginning that this was not an adoption. It was really for humanitarian reasons, to save lives, to save the children," said Laurent. The case has caused embarrassment for France, which is an ally of Deby and has a military contingent stationed in Chad. Paris will provide the bulk of a European Union peacekeeping force that is due to start deploying in east Chad next month to protect around 400,000 Sudanese refugees and Chadian civilians who have fled violence spilling over from Darfur.

ITN Source | October 31, 2007

Tags:. .chads. .bernard. .spilling. .labour. .abduction