Sentences in Kidnap Case Call for Hard Labor
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 27, 2007
PARIS, Dec. 26 -- A court in Chad on Wednesday sentenced six French charity workers to eight years of hard labor each on charges of trying to kidnap 103 African children.
The conviction and sentencing were handed down on the fourth day of the trial of workers from the charity Zoe's Ark, who were accused of fraud and kidnapping for attempting to fly the children to France for adoption in Europe.
The defendants argued that they were trying to find homes for orphans from the war-ravaged Darfur region of Sudan, which borders Chad, and were duped by local intermediaries about the family status of individual children. Investigations showed that most of the youngsters, who ranged in age from 1 to 10 years old, were Chadians who lived with at least one parent or other relative.
The case has attracted international attention at a time when children's organizations worldwide are demanding tougher oversight and regulation of Westerners' adoptions of youngsters from developing countries.
A French Foreign Ministry spokesman said Thursday night that France will attempt to have the six charity workers transferred to France to serve their sentences, although France no longer permits hard labor.
In addition to the six French defendants, the court sentenced to four years in prison a Chadian and a Sudanese who worked as intermediaries for the charity, according to reports from Chad.
The eight convicted men and women were ordered to pay $9 million in damages to the families of the 103 children involved in the case.
"This is a sentence that comes under the category of a judicial masquerade," C¿line Lorenzon, an attorney for the six French defendants, told France-Info radio. "We expected this. They didn't listen to any argument."
She added, "We head back this evening with the feeling that Chad's justice system didn't do its job and that the Chadian people still have a lot to do to be able to be in a republic and have democratic rights."
The trial in the Chadian capital of N'Djamena revealed details of lax monitoring and shady deals that allowed children who were not war orphans to be handed over to the charity.
The case began in October, after Chadian officials intercepted a convoy carrying the children to an airplane for the flight to Europe.
Chadian officials originally also arrested three French journalists accompanying the charity workers and members of the crew of the plane chartered to fly the children to Europe. A week after the arrests, French President Nicolas Sarkozy flew to Chad in his presidential jet and picked up the journalists and some of the flight crew, vowing to return and "get the people left in Chad, no matter what they did."
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."
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