Chad court sentences French to 8 years hard labor
Updated: 2007-12-27 10:34
N'DJAMENA -- Six French aid workers were sentenced to eight years of hard labor each after a court in Chad found them guilty on Wednesday of trying to kidnap 103 children from the African country.
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France, while calling the verdict a "sovereign decision," said it would ask Chad to implement a 1976 bilateral judicial accord which would allow the convicted six to be transferred home to serve jail sentences in their own country.
The court in the capital N'Djamena handed down the sentence on the fourth day of the trial of the six members of the French humanitarian group Zoe's Ark. They were arrested in October for trying to fly the 103 children, aged one to 10, to Europe.
The court also ordered them to pay compensatory damages of 40 million CFA francs ($88,000) for each of the 103 children involved, totaling 4.12 billion CFA francs ($9 million) in all.
After the sentence was read by the court president, the French, four men and two women, were escorted from the courtroom among a jostling mob of journalists, their faces serious.
Defense lawyers and relatives of the six reacted with dismay to the sentence and called on France's government to work for a solution with Chad that would enable them to be returned home.
Chad's government had faced heavy popular pressure to punish the Zoe's Ark members.
But there is widespread expectation of a diplomatic deal between Paris and N'Djamena to send them quickly back to France, either through the judicial accord or a pardon granted by Chadian President Idriss Deby. None of these options were mentioned by the court in delivering the sentence.
French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Pascale Andreani said in Paris: "France, after obtaining the agreement of the members of Zoe's Ark and examining the implementation of the judicial cooperation accord between France and Chad, in particular article 29, will ask the Chadian authorities for the transfer of the prisoners to France."
There was no immediate comment from Chadian officials.
One of the six's Defense lawyers, Gilbert Collard, criticized the sentence, saying there was no justice in Chad. "I hope the French government will move to quickly bring home our compatriots, who have been caught in a trap," he told reporters.
RESCUING "DARFUR ORPHANS"
A Chadian and a Sudanese accused of acting as accomplices to the Zoe's Ark group were sentenced by the court to four years in jail, while two other Chadians were acquitted.
Janine Lelouch, mother of Emilie Lelouch, one of the six French convicted, told French television she hoped they could come home quickly, "because they can't stand it much longer."
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