How can this not be a set-up
Unbelievable!!!
Is anyone going to buy any of this. On 31 March the French employers were pardonned by the Chadian gouvernement after fierce French diplomatic pressure and in exchange for military support. That very day the two remaining convicts of the crimes of Arche de Zoe escape from prison in Chad, when the rebels atacked the Chadian capital.
I don't expect much good when France later this year will chair the European Union. With the French government supposedly in favour of child trafficking, we can expect more cases like this, with similar pardons and cover ups.
Child smuggling saga prisoners on the run
April 02, 2008 Edition 1
NDJAMENA: A Sudanese witchdoctor and a Chadian jailed over a French charity's attempt to smuggle children from Chad escaped after a rebel attack on the capital.
"Both of them left the prison where they were being held," Chad's top prison official Adoum Doungous said yesterday.
Souleimane Ibrahim Adam, a witch doctor, and Chadian national Mahamat Dagot were sentenced to four years in jail over an attempt by the French charity Zoe's Ark to fly 103 children to France for adoption after claiming they were orphans or refugees from Sudan's war-wracked Darfur region.
The French aid workers were detained in October last year while trying to fly the children out.
The children were found to be Chadian, not war refugees, and to have at least one living parent.
The six French nationals were sentenced in December to eight years of hard labour, before being sent to serve their sentences in French jails. They were recently pardoned by Chadian president Idriss Deby following pressure from France. - Sapa-AFP
Pardoned French Charity Workers Convicted in Chad Kidnapping Freed From Jail
Source:Europe
Tuesday , 01 April 2008
Six French charity workers were released from jail in France Monday after they were pardoned by Chad's President Idriss Deby. Lisa Bryant has more from Paris.
President Deby signed a presidential pardon that paved the way for the release of six members of the Zoe's Ark charity who were convicted for abducting 103 African children and take them to France.
A Chadian court sentenced them earlier this year to eight years of hard labor, a sentenced translated into equivalent prison terms in France where they were subsequently transferred.
The six, who were arrested in October as they were poised to fly a planeload of children to France, have consistently denied the charges. They maintained they wanted to help refugees from Darfur, Sudan, just across the border and that they had been deceived by middlemen.
The children turned out not to be Sudanese, and many of them had living relatives.
Celine Lorenzon, lawyer for Zoe's Ark president Eric Breteau, reacted with relief at the news of Mr. Deby's pardon.
Lorenzon told France-Info radio the six had already spent six months in prison. It was six months too many, she said.
The presidential pardon had been expected. Mr. Deby said earlier this year he was ready to do so.
Still uncertain, however, is the status of the nearly $10 million damage award and interest payments a Chadian court ordered the six to pay. The French government says it will not pick up the tab.
By Lisa Bryant
VOA News, Paris
31 March 2008