French aid workers found guilty of child kidnappings

A Chadian court sentenced six French aid workers to eight years of forced labour after convicting them of trying to kidnap 103 African children.

Yesterday’s sentence came on the fourth day of the trial of the Zoe’s Ark workers, who were charged with fraud and kidnapping in October after authorities stopped a convoy with the children, whom the charity was planning to fly to France.

The defendants maintain they were driven by compassion to help orphans in Darfur, which borders Chad. An uprising that flared in Darfur in 2003 has led to the deaths of more than 200,000 people and forced 2.5 million to flee.

But subsequent investigations revealed most of the 103 children that Zoe’s Ark was planning to fly out were Chadians who had at least one parent or close adult relative with whom they lived.

The wife of Zoe’s Ark logistics chief Alain Peligat expressed a “feeling of injustice, of course, because this case involves doctors, rescue workers, professors – not mercenaries – and they were simply going to save lives”.

“The rumours were that it was going to be 10 years,” Christine Peligat said by phone from the Champagne region east of Paris. “I’m not happy with a conviction of course, but it didn’t exceed 10 years.

“In any case, this case doesn’t hold up.”

The French foreign ministry in Paris would not comment on a judicial verdict by another nation, but said it would ask Chadian authorities to transfer the six convicted to France. The countries have a bilateral judicial agreement that could allow for the six to be transferred home.

Jeannine Lelouch, mother of detained Zoe’s Ark member Emilie Lelouch, said she was “devastated” by the verdict, telling France’s LCI television: “You have to hope that they’ll quickly return to France because they aren’t holding up on their feet anymore.”

Celine Lorenzon, a lawyer for the six defendants, called the sentence “a judicial masquerade”.

“We head back this evening with the feeling that Chad’s justice system didn’t do its job,” she said last night on France-Info radio.

Defence lawyer Gilbert Collard said: “There is a political power that is using this case to ease tensions that exist with its community and applying this big spectacle trial to make people believe there’s justice – when there isn’t.”

The case has embarrassed France and sparked protests in the central African country, a former French colony.

Aid workers say their already-difficult job along Darfur’s border has been complicated by the suspicion some Chadians now have towards all foreigners professing to offer help.

Days after the Zoe’s Ark workers were arrested, the Republic of Congo announced it was suspending all international adoptions because of the events in Chad.

Prosecutor Beassoum Ben Ngassoro had requested the aid workers receive seven to 11 years of forced labour.

France’s role in the region has already come under scrutiny in recent months as the European Union plans to send a military mission to Chad to protect refugees fleeing violence in neighbouring Sudan.

The deployment of the 4,300-member force, drawn largely from France, has already been delayed because of lack of necessary equipment.

Last month, a Chadian rebel group has declared a “state of war” against French and other foreign armies – an apparent warning to the EU force.