France To Work With Chad Over Missing Kids

Chad will investigate reports at least 74 Chadian children were flown to France more than a month and a half ago without their parents' knowledge, a senior judicial official said Thursday.

A network of local human rights groups wrote to the public prosecutor's department with details about the 74 children said to have been flown from Chad to a military airport outside Paris on Sept. 17, said Masngarel Kagah of the public prosecutor's department.

French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Pascale Andreani dismissed the report as an unfounded rumor.

"This information is among the rumors circulating around the Zoe's Ark affair. It is without foundation," she said.

Kagah said that it was not clear who flew the children out of Chad, adding it may not be Zoe's Ark, the French aid group that was stopped from taking other children out of Chad last week. Six French Zoe's Ark workers have been charged in Chad with kidnapping for seeking to send 103 other children they claimed were orphans from war-wracked Darfur on a plane to France. They face up to 20 years at hard labor if convicted.

The French Foreign Ministry and others have cast doubt on the claims by Zoe's Ark that the children were orphans from neighboring Sudan's Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed since fighting erupted in early 2003. While Zoe's Ark says its intentions were purely humanitarian, U.N. and other aid agencies say taking children - even those in desperate circumstances - away from their families and culture may not be the best way to help them.

The affair also has focused attention on the inability of many African governments to safeguard children and ensure that those claiming to want to help are not sex or labor traffickers.

Kagah said that the Network of Human Rights Associations in Chad gathered the information about the 74 children after several parents went to inform the organization their children were missing.

The children "have effectively been kidnapped. They landed at this military airport to go to an unknown destination," Kagah told The Associated Press.

Kagah, who received the letter dated Tuesday and an accompanying document, told The Associated Press he will write to the public prosecutor, forwarding the documents and initiating an investigation.

The children are aged between one and six, according to the letter that Kagah read to The Associated Press. The accompanying document lists 74 names, Kagah said.

"We do not know how many (other) children were transported in such conditions," Kagah told The Associated Press.

In France, a spokesman for Zoe's Ark, Christophe Letien, said he knew nothing about the report and that his group was not involved.

"I can assure that this was not from Zoe's Ark. That is absolutely certain. Just one aircraft was chartered and it is the plane that is still there at Abeche," he said. "As for other organizations that might have done this type of thing, I know absolutely nothing."

Also Thursday, dozens of young men protested outside a N'djamena's courthouse where the Zoe's Ark cases were being heard, one group shouting, "Justice," and the other replying, "In Chad."

It was the second day of protests sparked by French President Sarkozy saying earlier this week he wanted the remaining French people facing possible trial in Chad to be returned to France.

Later the protesters marched to the French embassy to continue their demonstration there.

In a meeting Thursday at the presidential palace in Paris with members of the charity workers' families, Sarkozy said he had confidence in the judicial process.

"The president of the republic is delighted with the cooperation under way between the Chadian legal system and the French legal system," a statement from the presidency said. Sarkozy "expressed his confidence in the legal system and underscored that it must work in a calm manner and in the full respect of Chadian sovereignty."

The French leader "reiterated that the French authorities have provided, since the beginning of the affair, consular, medical and material assistance" to those detained, the statement said.

The family members did not make any comment to the press following the meeting, which lasted one hour.

Sarkozy made a surprise visit to the former French colony on Sunday, in time for the release of three journalists and four Spanish flight attendants detained with the aid workers from Zoe's Ark. In addition to the six Zoe's Ark workers being held on kidnapping charges, three other Spanish crew and a Belgian pilot are being held in the capital, N'djamena, on accessory charges.