Kidnap: Chad hunts for parents

2007-11-16 11:52

Aymeric Vincenot

Abeche - More than 100 children caught up in an abduction scandal involving a French charity in Chad are living in limbo in an orphanage, as social workers struggle to identify them and their parents.

Unable to return home, the 103 children - many of them under five year old - spend their time playing games in their temporary home in Abeche in eastern Chad.

Staff at the Franco-Swiss Protestant mission, which usually housed only about 15 children, said their young charges cried far less than they did when they first arrived in late October.

The youngest among them is 14 months, the oldest nine. Honore About, head of the investigation to identify the children and their parents, said: "Sixty-five children have been identified and their identity verified."

6 French workers remain in jail

But even they could not return home yet since it was up to the authorities in the capital, N'Djamena, where the child abduction investigation had been unfolding, to determine when they can be released.

Six French workers from the Zoe's Ark charity, which attempted to fly the children out of Chad to France, remained in jail in Chad in connection with the case.

Originally, 17 Europeans were arrested, but 11 had since been freed. They included three French journalists and four female Spanish flight attendants released after French President Nicolas Sarkozy made a lightning trip to Chad on November 04.

Zoe's Ark said the children were orphans from neighbouring Sudan's war-torn Darfur region who it planned to place in foster care with families in Europe.

But Chad said the group did not have permission to take the children out of the country, and aid agencies who had since cared for them said most of the youngsters were Chadian and had at least one living parent.

'Chad doesn't have means'

Identifying all the children was expected to take time, and Chadian officials were working with limited resources. Some children did't know their full names, said About.

Parents claiming them often did not have identity papers or birth certificates, said Hamad Daoud Chari, the local prosecutor. As for using DNA testing, "Chad doesn't have the means", the prosecutor said.

As a result, much depended on observation.

On the first day, About noticed a group of 13 children who stuck together, demonstrating a link between them. It was later determined they all came from the town of Tine on the border with Sudan.

Officials also relied on children's reactions when identifying parents.

The prosecutor said: "When someone says they are a father or mother of a child ... we bring them to the orphanage, we put them in a corner, and we bring in the children. If a child goes to the person, that means a lot."

Besides the 65 children whose identities haD been established, another 18 were known, but their parents still had not been identified.

- AFP