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Raising Banners for Peace
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Chad
Kidnap Case Children Head Home
Government and U.N. agencies have begun reuniting the families of 83 children caught up in an adoption row between Chad and France, a Chadian minister said Saturday.
The Chadian children were transported Friday from an orphanage to Adre, a town that borders Sudan, before being taken to nearby villages where their families live, said Ngarmbatina Carmel Souiv, the social action minister. In all, 103 children had been involved in the dispute; the rest will be reunited with their families in coming days, she said.
Six French workers with the charity Zoe's Ark had said the children were orphans from the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan. In October, they tried to fly the children to France for adoption, but Chadians working for the charity alerted police.
In December, a Chadian court found the aid workers guilty of kidnapping and sentenced them to eight years in prison with hard labor. That sentence was commuted to eight years in prison when they were transferred to France under a judicial agreement.
UKRAINE
3 Convicted in Reporter's Killing
A Ukrainian court convicted three former policemen Saturday in the 2000 killing of an investigative journalist and prominent critic of then- President Leonid Kuchma.
Heorhiy Gongadze, a Georgian working in Ukraine, wrote about political corruption and criminality at a time when authorities in the former Soviet state kept a tight grip over the media.
His headless corpse was discovered in woods near Kiev two months after he disappeared in September 2000. His head was never found.
The former policemen went on trial in December 2005, after years of investigations, the 2004 Orange Revolution that ushered in a pro-Western government and accusations that Kuchma himself was involved in the killing.
The former president has always denied the accusation.
A court in Kiev sentenced Mykola Protasov to 13 years in prison and Valeriy Kostenko and Oleksandr Popovych to 12 years. A fourth suspect is on the run.
