CHAD: French President Nicolas Sarkozy flies seven Europeans out of Chad but others remained in jail charged with child abduction and fraud

The three French journalists and four Spanish flight attendants who boarded Sarkozy's plane on Sunday (November 4) were among 16 French and Spanish nationals arrested over a week ago as they tried to fly 103 African children to Europe. Eleven European nationals still remain in Chadian custody. Six members of French group Zoe's Ark are charged with fraud and abduction. Three members of a Spanish air crew are charged as accessories, as is a Belgian pilot who was arrested later. "The Chadian justice system will discuss with the French justice system to see how we can find, in the shortest possible time, in a matter of weeks, a solution which respects the Chadian justice and which gives at the same time, the necessary guarrantees to all parties involved, " Sarkozy who flew in earlier to intervene on behalf of the Europeans said. He was at a joint news conference with President Idriss Deby. France, the former colonial power, has troops stationed in Chad and will provide about half of up to 3,000 European Union forces that will deploy in the violent eastern region in coming weeks to protect Sudanese and Chadian refugees. Earlier the seven Europeans, tired but relieved, were driven under military escort from the prison in the capital N'Djamena to the main law courts, where they were formally released. "I'm fine, I'm fine, happy," French photojournalist Jean-Daniel Guillou told reporters before a Chadian soldier asked him to stop talking. The Europeans were arrested in the eastern Chadian town of Abeche, near the border with Sudan's war-torn Darfur region, as they sought to fly out the children aged between 1 and 10 years. Chad accused the group of trying to abduct the children but Zoe's Ark has said it intended to place orphans from Darfur with European families for foster care and that it had the right to do so under international law. U.N. and Chadian officials say most of the infants had come from families with at least one parent living on the violent Chad-Sudan border, contradicting the "war orphans" description of the children given by Zoe's Ark.

ITN Source | November 5, 2007

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