FRESNES, France (AFP) — Six French charity workers convicted of child kidnapping in Chad will appear January 14 before a court outside Paris to have their hard labour sentences adjusted, a prosecutor said Saturday.
Jean-Jacques Bosc, the prosecutor, rejected demands by family members for a new trial, saying the transfer of the six from Chad to France implied "an acceptance of the sentence pronounced by the Chadian justice as definitive."
The six members of L'Arche de Zoe (Zoe's Ark) returned to their native country late Friday, two days after a court in Ndjamena sentenced them to eight years of hard labour on charges of trying to abduct 103 African children.
On their arrival, the six were incarcerated in a prison in Fresnes, outside Paris, as prosecutors mulled how to translate their hard labour sentences into local terms. France has no such penalty.
One of their lawyers, Gilbert Collard, said he would challenge any translation of the Chadian sentence when the case appears next month before a court in Creteil, outside Paris.
"The question that must be posed is, 'will French jurisdictions accept to endorse a decision rendered by a totalitarian justice?'" Collard asked in an interview on France Inter radio.
Family members visiting the charity workers for the first time said two of the six -- Nadia Merimi and Zoe's Ark head Eric Breteau -- were hospitalised at the prison, with Breteau "very sick."
Breteau's ex-wife Agnes said he had lost 20 kilograms.
Prison officials contacted by AFP did not offer any information on their condition.
But Christine Peligat, wife of Zoe's Ark logistics coordinator Alain Peligat, said the others were being detained "in a privileged wing, a sort of VIP wing."
But she struck a combative note, saying: "We are going to fight, we will not accept" the sentence.
Antonia Van Winkelberg, the wife of Zoe's Ark doctor Philippe Van Winkelberg, echoed her, saying: "How can France tolerate such injustice?"
A discordant note was struck by the sister of one of the accused, Dominique Aubry, who accused Breteau of duping her sibling, saying: "He has cheated people, I am angry with the fraudsters."
The six were arrested in October as they were poised to fly the children from eastern Chad to France.
They claimed initially that all the children were Sudanese orphans from neighbouring war-torn Darfur and later, in court, that they had been duped by middlemen.
Inquiries by international agencies found almost all of the children were Chadian with at least one living parent.
Families at the trial claimed they, too, had been deceived and told that their offspring were going to be educated in eastern Chad.
Besides delivering the hard labour sentences, the Chadian court also ordered the charity workers to jointly pay 4.12 billion CFA francs (6.3 million euros, 9.2 million dollars) to the families of the children caught up in the affair.
A Chadian and a Sudanese who had worked with the charity as intermediaries were also sentenced to four years in prison apiece.
The transfer of the six French nationals to the Fresnes prison follows an agreement between France and Chad to have them serve their sentences in their home country.
Chadian authorities must approve the French adjustments to their sentences, but in any case the length of their terms will remain the same, France's justice ministry has said.
The six may also face charges related to a separate judicial inquiry opened in Paris in October, targeting Zoe's Ark for possible swindling and for "illegal exercise of an intermediary activity with adoption in mind."
The case raised tensions between France and Chad, a former French colony, as Paris prepares to spearhead a 3,500-strong EU peacekeeping force in eastern Chad to protect refugee camps in the region bordering Darfur.
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