AFP: French charity workers jailed in Chadian 'adoption' scandal 30 October

Chadian president pardoned six French charity workers on Monday, after the members of Zoe's Ark had been sentenced in December to eight years of hard labour for attempting to fly 103 African children to France. The official decrees, published in Chad's capital N'djamena, have now to be transmitted to French authorities who could free the aid workers within the next 24 hours.

The members of the French humanitarian group Zoe's Ark were arrested in late October for trying to fly the children aged 1-10 to Europe.

Six charity workers convicted in Chad of trying to kidnap children and fly them to France are awaiting their sentence. The six members of the aid group Zoe's Ark were ordered to serve eight years of hard labour by a Chadian court, but now that they have been extradited to France, their sentence is being recast. Only five of the six defendants were in court on Monday, including Zoe's Ark founder Eric Breteau, who has been on hunger strike since his return from Chad. The group insists it was pursuing a humanitarian goal: to rescue children from the crisis in Darfur.

Six members of a French charity accused of trying to kidnap 103 children in Chad go on trial on Friday in a new test of France's relations with its former African colonies. Images of trial opening.

Their departure from Chad followed a highly publicised legal case and diplomatic imbroglio which embarrassed France, a key backer of Chadian President Idriss Deby. French troops and planes stationed in Chad have given logistical and intelligence support to Deby's army fighting rebels in the east. France is also the main contributor of troops to a European Union peace force preparing to deploy in eastern Chad to protect thousands of Sudanese refugees and displaced Chadian civilians.

A Chadian prosecutor said the French, who are members of a group called Zoe's Ark, faced five to 20 years hard labour if convicted of child-trafficking. The charity, which said it wanted to place orphans from Sudan's war-torn Darfur with European families denied that it had acted illegally. Seven Spanish crew members of the plane chartered for the operation were charged as accessories, along with two Chadians.

The women's car was ambushed by a gang with machine-guns in Bosasso port as they drove to a local hospital. It's the latest abduction in the semi-autonomous northern Puntland region of Somalia. It comes two days after gunmen in Puntland released French journalist Gwen Le Gouil. He'd been kidnapped and held for eight days - his captors demanding $80,000 in ransom.

Six French aid workers accused of trying to kidnap 103 children return to jail after the third day of their trial end. One of the accused falls ill during trial.

A failure of internal controls at Societe Generale contributed to the bank's multi-billion-dollar rogue trade scandal, France's finance minister said Monday, calling for tougher penalties for breaches of regulations. The embattled bank faced fresh troubles with a trial opening in Paris involving a multi-million dollar money-laundering scam between France and Israel, that allegedly operated in the last 1990s. Four banks, including Societe Generale, and 138 people, including the bank's chairman Daniel Bouton, are accused of turning a blind eye to a vast traffic of cheques between the two countries. An AFPTV report.