CHAD:SIX FRENCH voluntary workers sentenced to eight years' hard labour for trying to illegally fly children out of Chad and hand them to European families were pardoned yesterday by Chad's president, Idriss Deby.
The members of the Zoe's Ark charity could be freed shortly from the French prison they were transferred to and where their leader, Eric Breteau, a former firefighter, is said to be weak from a hunger strike. The six were stopped in October last year preparing to fly out 103 children, some of whom had been dressed with fake bandages to make them look ill.
The charity members claimed to be on a humanitarian mission to save Darfur war orphans and had persuaded French and Belgian "host" families to pay up to €2,000 each to foster the children.
But UN agencies found most of the children were Chadian and had been removed from relatives or families. Many parents said they had entrusted their children to the group thinking they would be educated at a project in Chad.
The case shocked the international aid community working on the border with Darfur and raised tensions between France and its former colony Chad, as Paris prepared to lead a 3,700-strong EU peacekeeping force to protect refugee camps in the region bordering Darfur.
Mr Breteau and five colleagues, including his girlfriend, were sentenced to eight years' hard labour by a Chad court in December last year. But under a judicial agreement they were allowed to serve their sentences in a French prison.
State-owned Radio Chad said yesterday that Mr Deby's decision to pardon them came on the advice of his judicial council. Mr Deby had raised the possibility of a pardon last month after France supported him when rebels invaded his capital in February.
But it is not clear whether France will pay the €6.3 million that the Chad leader demanded should be given to the children's families in compensation.
A lawyer for one of the volunteers, Nadia Merini, a nurse from the Paris suburbs, said she was "pleased and relieved" by the pardon. Mr Breteau's lawyer said he was weakened by hunger strikes, adding: "They have already been detained for six months, six months too many."
In a separate case brought in France, magistrates have charged Mr Breteau with helping an illegal flight of children to France,attempting to be an adoption intermediary, and fraud. He faces up to 10 years in prison or a €750,000 fine. -