N'DJAMENA, Chad - One of six French aid workers charged in Chad with kidnapping children told a court Saturday that local colleagues had misled them.
Emilie Lelouch accused local intermediaries of having lied about the origins of the children whom French aid group Zoe's Ark had been planning to take to France.
"The operation was aimed at evacuating children orphaned by the war in Darfur, absolutely not Chad,'' she said on the second day of the trial. "I never had any doubt whatsoever about their Sudanese origins.''
Lelouch, five other French citizens, three Chadians and a Sudanese citizen were charged with fraud and kidnapping after authorities stopped a convoy with 103 children that the charity was planning to fly to France.
Zoe's Ark members say their intention was to help children orphaned by the war in the neighbouring Sudanese province of Darfur, but subsequent investigations revealed most of the children were Chadians who had at least one parent or close relative with whom they lived.
Lelouch said she had never met any of the children's relatives, only village chiefs who always presented the children as Sudanese. The charity workers had arranged for French families to foster the children.
"France is a country at peace. Even in Chad, these children were not safe,'' Lelouch told the court.
The families have said that they were not told their children were going to be taken abroad, and that the aid workers lied and said they were offering temporary local school places. A journalist accompanying the aid workers has confirmed this account, saying that the French feared Sudanese authorities would try to thwart their humanitarian mission. But Lelouch denied that the aid workers had lied to families.
Another Zoe's Ark member, Nadia Merimi Aubry, confirmed Lelouch's account and said that the two women had followed directions given by their chief of mission and took no decisions themselves.
But their accounts were contradicted by Souleymane Ibrahim Adam, a Sudanese citizen accused of complicity in kidnapping 63 of the children. He told the court that the women were lying, saying, "No, that's false. The whites told me they had come to help poor children in Adre (a town in eastern Chad).''
The case has raised tensions between Chad, whose oil wealth has not trickled down to its impoverished citizens, and its former colonial master France, who supports President Idriss Deby and has several hundred troops stationed in the country.
French diplomats have insisted that the two presidents are discussing deals that might allow the aid workers to serve sentences in France if convicted, but there have been several protests in Chad over perceived French interference in the judicial process and double standards for the European and African accused.
On Friday, the charity's head, Eric Breteau, said France and Chadian authorities had been fully informed of the plans of Zoe's Ark. Both governments deny this, and the French government had previously issued a warning saying that the group's activities could be illegal.
If convicted, the accused face prison sentences ranging from five to 20 years in prison with hard labour.
