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'Children Rescue' flight crew held by police in Chad

The Guardian, MADRID and PARIS

Seven Spanish crew members of a plane hired to spirit 103 children out of Chad are being held by police, along with nine French citizens detained last week, it was confirmed on Sunday as international condemnation grew over a French charity's bizarre attempt at humanitarianism.

The crew were seized along with six members of the charity Zoe's Ark and three French journalists. The charity claimed its operation "Children Rescue" sought to save the lives of Darfur orphans, aged between one and 10, by housing them with families in France who had each paid more than 2,000 euros (US$2,900).

But Chad's president, Idriss Deby Itno, who visited the children in the eastern city of Abeche on Friday, described the mission as "child trafficking" and promised severe punishment. France has signalled that it will not intervene to help its detained nationals. Its ambassador to Chad, Bruno Foucher, yesterday described the charity's plan as "a completely illegal operation."

"The members of the association who took part in this whole illegal manipulation will answer for their acts in Chad," he said.

Aid agencies, including the UN children's fund UNICEF have also condemned the charity's actions.

The Chadian authorities are still trying to establish whether the children are orphans, whether some are as sick as the charity claimed and where they come from. Aid workers suspect that many did not come from Sudan's Darfur region, but are Chadian.

Girjet, the Barcelona-based charter airline hired to fly the children to France, said yesterday that the plane's captain, first officer and five flight attendants, four of them women, were in police custody. The company denied any knowledge of a plan to host the children with French families, who waited at an airport near Rheims on Thursday night before learning that the flight was aborted.

"When we landed, we were taken by surprise by all these questions of illegal adoptions of kids," said Fernando Zarza, the head of Girjet's flight coordination department.

He claimed the company had received a permit authorizing the evacuation for health reasons.
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