Deby pardons Zoe's Ark charity members

Chadian President Idriss Deby granted a presidential pardon Monday, to six French aid workers convicted by a Chadian court for attempting to kidnap 103 children and fly them to Europe.

 "A presidential pardon has been granted to the six French members of Zoe's Ark," read a decree signed by Deby and released in the Chadian capital of Ndjamena.

Reacting to the news, FRANCE 24’s Virginie Herz, who has covered the story from Chad, said that “it is absolutely not a surprise, particularly once the judiciary gave the greenlight on Friday."

Last week, Chad's Higher Judicial Council, which advises Deby on legal matters, issued a green light for a presidential pardon.

France's diplomatic and military support helped Deby resist a rebel assault on the capital N'Djamena in early February, and the Chadian leader has since made it clear that he was ready to pardon the French aid workers.

  
Arrested in Chad, sentenced in France

Zoe’s Ark charity founder Eric Breteau and five other aid workers were sentenced to eight years of hard labour in December 2007 in Chad, after they were arrested on October 25 while trying to fly 103 children from Chad to Europe without permission.

The prisoners were jailed in Chad but were later transferred to France, under an agreement that they would serve out their Chadian sentence in French prisons.

Despite the pardon, the six are still still under investigation in France for illegal excercise of intermediary activity connected to adoption, aiding the unlawful stay of foreign minors, as well as fraud. Four of the six,  the charity's president Eric Breteau, his companion Emilie Lelouch, the team's doctor, Philippe van Winkelberg and Alain Péligat, the logistics coordinator, have already been charged.
 
The Zoe's Ark members protested their innocence throughout the trial, saying they were misled by middlemen into believing the children were orphans from the Sudanese region of Darfur, which borders eastern Chad.

Most of the children, however, were found to have come from families in Chadian border villages who had been persuaded to give up their offspring in exchange for promises of a better education.