CHAD: UN agencies gave aid to group accused of child abduction

The French humanitarian activists accused by Chad of abducting children were seeking to save them from suffering and death, and had received material assistance from U.N. agencies, their lawyers said on Wednesday (November 7). Six French members of the Zoe's Ark group are facing trial in Chad on charges of abduction and fraud after they were stopped last month from flying 103 African children to Europe aboard a chartered Spanish passenger jet. Three Spanish air crew and a Belgian pilot are also charged as accomplices in the case which has strained ties between France and its former colony and focused a spotlight on the work of humanitarian groups operating in violence-torn east Chad. French lawyers Gilbert Collard and Mario Stasi, who are acting for the accused Zoe's Ark members, told reporters in Chad their clients felt the charges against them completely misrepresented what they were doing. "They really hope to be able to explain themselves, to show that the charges are not real ... that they were acting with a humanitarian objective," Collard said in the Chadian capital N'Djamena, where the accused have been formally questioned. Chad's authorities have said the Zoe's Ark group, which operated under the name Children Rescue in the country, was trying to fly the children out without authorisation. Film footage taken by French journalists who covered the Zoe's Ark members working in eastern Chad show they sought to conceal their plans, and that they put fake bandages, marked with fake blood, on the infants to pretend they were injured. At the same time, the group told European families it wanted to place orphans from Sudan's Darfur region for foster care. But United Nations officials said inquiries had shown most of the 21 girls and 82 boys aged 1-10 years which the group had in its charge were not orphans, were in basically good health and came from villages on the Chad-Sudan border. "Maybe they were acting outside of classical methods, but their sole goal was to save children from horror and death -- they remain convinced that was the objective," Collard said.

ITN Source | November 8, 2007

Tags:. .europe. .aid. .trial. .rescue. .goal