A French court yesterday sentenced six charity workers to eight years in prison, after they were convicted in Chad of trying to kidnap 103 children they said were orphans from Darfur.
JOELLE DIDERICH, CRETEIL
A French court yesterday sentenced six charity workers to eight years in prison, after they were convicted in Chad of trying to kidnap 103 children they said were orphans from Darfur.
The six were sentenced in the central African country in December to eight years of hard labour. However, they were then transferred to France under a 1976 judicial accord between the two countries and were jailed soon after their arrival.
Because France does not have forced labour, the court in Creteil, south-east of Paris, was asked to adapt the sentences and they were converted to eight years' jail yesterday.
Supporters of the workers, from the aid group Zoe's Ark, protested loudly in court after the decision was read. One of the three defendants present at the ruling, Emilie Lelouch, gestured and shouted to her family through a glass partition before being led out of court.
The court did not retry the case and ruled that the Chadian court's sentence was valid in France, saying there was no proof of a "flagrant denial of justice" as defined by the European Convention on Human Rights.
The ruling said the convention could not be applied to the letter in Chad as it is not a signatory state, but the Creteil court considered that the basic principles of a fair trial had been respected.
The lawyers for the workers said they would appeal against the ruling and did not consider the Chadian trial fair.
Defence lawyer Gilbert Collard called on French President Nicolas Sarkozy to intervene and obtain a presidential pardon from his Chadian counterpart, Idriss Deby.
He noted that Sarkozy had flown to Chad in November to bring home three French journalists and four Spanish flight crew members initially charged in the case.
"We are calling on the president of the republic to rally now so that the people convicted today can obtain a pardon as quickly as possible," said Collard.
Chadian authorities arrested members of the aid group - Eric Breteau; Lelouch, his partner; Alain Peligat; Dominique Aubry; Philippe van Winkelberg; and Nadia Merimi - in October, as they sought to send 103 children to France.
They insisted they were driven by compassion to help orphans in Sudan's conflict-racked Darfur, which borders Chad, but investigations showed that most of the children had at least one parent or close adult relative.
The group's transfer to France had sparked protests in Chad, with many decrying what they viewed as special treatment for Europeans.
The case was an embarrassment for France, coming as the country was pushing to send a European Union force to Chad to protect refugees fleeing Darfur.-AP
