NINE FRENCH ARRESTED WITH 'KIDNAPPED' CHILDREN

NINE FRENCH ARRESTED WITH 'KIDNAPPED' CHILDREN

N'DJAMENA, Oct 25, 2007 (AFP) - Chad authorities detained nine French people on Thursday as tried to put 103 allegedly sick children from Darfur on a flight to France, Chad's interior minister said.

Chadian police detained the French in the eastern town of Abeche before they got the children, aged up to about eight, on the special flight, Interior Minister Ahmat Bachir told AFP.

The minister, who was in Abeche at the time, said officials from a charity called Children Rescue would be presented to the state prosecutor in the town "to shed light on this business".

Chadian state radio described the children as "kidnapped on the Chad-Darfur border", while a Children Rescue spokesman, Eric Breton, told the radio they were being "evacuated to Paris for health reasons."

According to the radio report, some of the children were not sick, but members of the non-government organisation had bandaged their heads and limbs to give the impression they were.

A diplomatic source in Paris, asking not to be named, said the children had been transferred to an Abeche social centre and confirmed the arrest of nine French people.

One of those arrested is from a small charity called Arche de Zoe (Zoe's Ark), which seeks to have Darfur children "adopted" by French families.

French families had paid between 2,800 and 6,000 euros (4,000 and 8,575 dollars) for the children, who were to have been flown to Vatry, an airfield about 160 kilometres (100 miles) east of Paris, the diplomatic source said.

They probably included Chadian children and the Chad office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees had sent a team to try to find out, as well as take medical care of them, the source said.

In Chad, reports said some of the children were newborn babies just a few weeks old. French media said the children were aged between three and eight years.