Bribe demand scuppered airlift

2007-10-30 22:57

Paris - A would-be foster parent in a French charity's scheme to evacuate orphans from the Chad-Darfur border said on Tuesday that corrupt Chadian officials blocked the airlift when they were refused a bribe.

"It ended this way because the police chief in Abeche was asking for a colossal sum, a huge bribe, to allow the plane to take off.

The founder of the charity Zoe's Ark, Eric Breteau, refused to pay, said Delphine Charles, one of 258 people who signed up for the charity's project.

"They waited until they were in the plane, encircled it and arrested them. It's a fine tale of corruption."

Sixteen Europeans, including six members of Zoe's Ark and three French journalists, were arrested in the eastern Chadian town of Abeche over the operation and charged, among others, with kidnapping or complicity.

Adopted or fostered by families

They were detained as they prepared to put the children on a chartered flight to France.

The children were presented as orphans whose lives were at risk from civil war in Sudan's Darfur province. They were to have been adopted or fostered by families in France each paying between $4 000 and $8 600.

The UN children's agency UNICEF has said it does not know if they are orphans, but France's foreign ministry says it believes they are mostly Chadian and not Darfuris.

The French government insists it did everything to persuade Zoe's Ark not to go ahead, warning it would be breaking the law, but says the charity "tricked" it by using a different name, "Children Rescue", while in Chad.

- SAPA