Six French Citizens Found Guilty in Chad

Public outrage in Chad, a former French colony, over the incident prompted the government to convene a speedy trial.

During the trial, defendant Eric Breteau, head of Zoe's Ark, told the court, "I maintain what I've said since the start of this affair -- our intention was to fetch orphans from Darfur."

But prosecutors accused Breteau and other members of Zoe's Ark of tricking parents in eastern Chad into giving up their children. Several parents testified that they turned over their children to the charity because they believed they would be sent to a school in eastern Chad.

Souleymane Ibrahim Adam, the Sudanese charged as an accomplice, testified that he had duped the Zoe's Ark workers into believing some of the children were war orphans from Darfur.

He said he signed certificates verifying that 63 of the youngsters were Sudanese orphans even though he knew some had Chadian parents who were alive. He said the charity did not pay him for his actions.

"The whites said they had come to 'help poor children,' " Adam testified, adding that he signed the documents after hearing the charity planned to build a school in the Chadian border region where many of the children lived.

One of the charity workers, Emilie Lelouch, reversing initial comments that she believed all the children were Sudanese, testified during the trial that several mothers traveled to the Zoe's Ark facility in eastern Chad demanding the return of their infants. Lelouch said the charity gave those babies back to their mothers.

According to news reports, prosecutor Beassoum Ben Ngassoro told the court at the end of the trial: "They came with apparently humanitarian intentions but rapidly switched to the non-humanitarian."