Aid workers convicted in Chad are freed

At least three of six French aid workers convicted in a mass kidnapping case in Chad walked out of prison today, hours after the Chadian president pardoned the group.

The three remaining aid workers were expected to leave prisons later Monday.

The six, from a charity called Zoe’s Ark, had tried to take 103 children to France in October, claiming they were acting out of humanitarian concern for orphans from Sudan’s Darfur region.

However, an investigation showed the children were Chadian, and that most had at least one parent or close adult relative.

After convictions in Chad, the six were transferred to France to serve their eight-year sentences under a judicial agreement that converted forced labour into prison.

The case of the aid workers had inflamed anti-French sentiment in Chad, but President Idriss Deby raised the possibility of a pardon after French support helped him ward off a rebel attack on his capital last month. He signed the decree earlier today.

Television cameras captured a smiling Dominique Aubry, in charge of logistics for the group, leaving the prison in Caen, in the western Normandy region. He hugged a loved one in a group of some 30 waiting family and friends.

Another aid worker, Alain Peligat, another logistics specialist for Zoe’s Ark, was freed from prison in the Aube region, southeast of Paris.

A doctor in the group, Philippe Van Winkelberg, was freed in Draguinon, in southern France.

The children involved, meanwhile, spent months in an orphanage after their flight to France was stopped, and some have yet to be reunited with their families.

Delays were linked to bureaucratic difficulties, Chadian government officials’ determination to ensure the children were returned to the correct guardians and insecurity in eastern Chad.

One source of the problem was that Zoe’s Ark had left little paperwork identifying the children, UN officials involved in caring for the children had said.