Chad 'child kidnap' aid workers go on trial

Six French charity workers accused of kidnapping children they claimed were Darfur orphans said they were protected by international law from any charges at their trial today.

The six, from the French charity Zoe’s Ark, face 20 years in prison with hard labour if they are found guilty of trying to kidnap 103 African children last October.

They say the children had been orphaned by the conflict in the neighbouring Sudanese region of Darfur, and that they had arranged for French families to care for them.

But subsequent investigations revealed that most of the children were from Chad and had living parents or adults they regarded as parents.

Defence lawyer Gilbert Collard said that the accused will say “they did not come here to do harm, but to apply the legal doctrine of saving lives at any price. They admit that they did not follow the usual methods of humanitarian aid.”

He insisted that the defence team had “all the evidence to show that it was not kidnapping but a desire to save children in a humanitarian context.”

Many of the affected parents say that they were told their children would be going to school in Chad, and there was no mention of a trip to France.

Other children said they were lured away from their families with sweets. The aid workers also reportedly applied fake blood and bandages to the children, although none of them had been wounded, in preparation for a planned flight to France.

Chad police stopped their convoy of all-terrain vehicles on its way to the airport with the children on October 25, and the six have been jailed since then in a case that has drawn wide attention, sparked anti-French demonstrations and created diplomatic tensions between Chad and France.