Chad freed seven Europeans yesterday after more than a week in detention, their lawyer said, as French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived to discuss the case of 10 other Europeans accused of involvement in an alleged plan to kidnap 103 African children.
Three French journalists and four flight attendants from Spain were freed yesterday afternoon, said their lawyer, Jean-Bernard Padare. "They are free. It's over. It's the end," he said.
The Europeans - among them nine French citizens - were arrested on October 25 when a charity calling itself Zoe's Ark was stopped from flying the children from eastern Chad to Europe, where the group said it intended to place them with host families.
Chad's leader, Idriss Deby, met Sarkozy on the tarmac as the French president descended the steps of his official jet.
The Elysee palace in Paris said in a statement that Sarkozy was to meet Deby in the capital, N'Djamena, to discuss "the situation of our compatriots and the other European citizens being prosecuted" on kidnapping charges.
Zoe's Ark maintains its intentions were purely humanitarian and that it had conducted investigations over several weeks to determine the children it was taking were orphans.
However, France's Foreign Ministry and others have cast doubt on the group's claims that the children were orphans from Sudan's western Darfur region, where fighting since 2003 has forced thousands to flee to Chad.
Aid workers who interviewed the children said on Thursday most of them had been living with adults they considered their parents and came from villages on the Chadian-Sudanese border region.
Those detained in the case include the charity workers, the journalists and the crew of the plane the group planned to use to take the children to France.
Source: China Daily/Agencies
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