Six French charity workers convicted of child kidnapping in Africa will go before a court near Paris on Monday, as judges seek to adapt their Chadian sentences to French law.
Twenty days after the Zoe’s Ark team were given eight years hard labour — a sentence which does not exist in France — Creteil prosecutor Jean-Jacques Bosc has already said he will seek eight years imprisonment.
Eric Breteau, Emilie Lelouch, Alain Peligat, Philippe van Winkelberg, Nadia Merimi and Dominique Aubry were sent back to France two days after sentencing in Ndjamena, under the terms of a 1976 judicial convention.
After the group were denied a re-trial on French soil, the Creteil tribunal must decide how to interpret the bilateral accord which requires Chadian state approval for “reductions, suspensions, liberations and other means of executing sentences”.
Zoe’s Ark head Breteau was still hospitalised on Friday having gone on hunger strike after their transfer to Fresnes prison, and his presence is in doubt after he missed an appearance before judges in a separate French judicial enquiry into the charity’s activities, opened in October 2007.
According to the group’s legal team, Van Winkelberg, Zoe’s Ark doctor, and Breteau’s partner and assistant, Lelouch, were last week charged under the related French investigation with helping minors illegally enter France, acting as illegal adoption intermediaries, and fraud.
Peligat was also placed under investigation with conspiring to aid illegal residents in France, with all three facing up to ten years in jail plus fines of €750 000 ($1,1-million).
Breteau’s case has still to be considered.
The Chadian court had also ordered the charity workers to jointly pay 4,12-billion CFA francs (€6,3-million) to the families of the 103 African children caught up in the affair.
Throughout the affair, the Zoe’s Ark defendants maintained they were acting in good faith and sought to rescue war orphans from the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region bordering on eastern Chad. – AFP