Six French aid workers on Friday insisted they were trying to rescue Darfur orphans as their trial for kidnapping in Chad began, the same day a journalist who had accompanied the mission told French radio the workers had been secretive while in Chad about plans to spirit the children to France.
The head of French charity Zoe's Ark, Eric Breteau, called the kidnap charges "fantasies" and insisted in court that "we acted in good faith and we only wanted to bring help to these young victims of war and in the end obtain asylum for them in France."
Breteau and five other French citizens who work for Zoe's Ark face up to 20 years in prison with hard labor if they are found guilty of trying to kidnap 103 African children in October.
On Friday, Breteau insisted that both French and Chadian authorities were informed of the group's intentions in writing. The French government has previously said it warned the charity that its actions could contravene local laws.
The aid workers claimed the children had been orphaned by the conflict in the neighboring Sudanese region of Darfur, and arranged for French families to care for them. In court, Breteau said the children were presented to the aid agency with documentation proving their status as Sudanese orphans. But investigations revealed that most of the children, aged between one and 10 years old, were Chadians with living parents or adults they regarded as parents.
The parents of many of the children say that they were told their children would be going to school in Chad, and there was no mention of a trip to France.
In France on Friday, Marie-Agnes Peleran, one of three French journalists who had come to Chad to report on the Zoe's Ark mission, told France-Inter radio it was "never" said in Chad that the children were going to be taken to France, because "for security reasons, according to Eric Breteau, we couldn't say. Being in the border region, there were Sudanese security agents around."
Instead, she said, Zoe's Ark workers spoke of caring for the children for a certain period, giving them an education, and taking them to the main eastern Chad town of Abeche or N'djamena.
Some of the children have since said they were lured away from their families with sweets. The aid workers also reportedly applied fake blood and bandages to the children, although none of them had been wounded, in preparation for a planned flight to France. Chadian police stopped their convoy of all-terrain vehicles on its way to the airport with the children on Oct. 25.
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