Most of the 103 African children who a French group had planned to fly out of Chad as orphans said they had families, which included at least one close relative, United Nations agencies said on Thursday.
A joint report by United Nations children’s agency Unicef, the UN refugee agency and the International Committee of the Red Cross also said most of the 21 girls and 82 boys aged one to 10 years came from villages on the Chad-Sudan border.
Nine French nationals, seven Spaniards and at least two Chadians were arrested in eastern Chad last week after authorities stopped them from flying the children to Europe. They are being held on charges of abduction and fraud and face possible forced-labour terms if tried and convicted.
The detained French are members of a group called Zoe’s Ark, which said it wanted to place orphans from Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region with European families to give them a better life.
UN and Red Cross officials who interviewed the children said most told them they had local families.
”In the course of the conversations … 91 of the children mentioned a family environment consisting of at least one adult person that they considered a close relative,” a joint UN and Red Cross report said.
But it did not specify whether the relative mentioned was the mother or father in every case. — Reuters