ABECHE, Chad—A group of Europeans detained in eastern Chad for trying to fly 103 African children out of the country will be transferred to the capital N'Djamena for trial, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday.
The country's top tribunal decided that an N'Djamena court should handle the case of the nine French and seven Spanish nationals arrested last week in the eastern town of Abeche after they were stopped from flying the children to Europe.
"This ruling gives the jurisdiction to N'Djamena to judge the authors, co-authors and accomplices charged with abducting minors and fraud," one judicial official said, citing the charges brought against the Europeans by a local court.
If convicted, the main accused face possible forced labour terms of between five to 20 years.
The accused French include six members of a group called Zoe's Ark which has said it intended to place orphans from neighbouring Sudan's war-torn Darfur region with European families for foster care.
But U.N. officials and Chadian authorities say most of the children aged 1-10 years were not orphans but came from families living on the violent Chad-Sudan border, across which tens of thousands of refugees have fled the violence in Darfur.
Three French journalists, the Spanish crew of a chartered plane, and a Belgian pilot are also among those detained.
President Idriss Deby has held out the hope that the French reporters and the air hostesses from the Spanish crew could be released soon if it is proved they were not directly involved in committing any offence.
The affair of the children in Chad is an embarrassment to former colonial ruler France, which is an ally of Deby and has troops and aircraft stationed in the landlocked country.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has personally appealed to Deby to free the French journalists and urged a mutually satisfactory solution, "so that no one loses face".
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade has asked Deby to free the Spanish air crew, Senegal's official APS news agency said.
Deby on Thursday said the case would have no impact on France's relations with Chad, including French-sponsored plans to deploy a European Union peacekeeping force in eastern Chad to protect refugees and aid workers there.
Not Orphans
International outrage over the case of the children has increased as evidence has emerged that they were not the destitute Darfuri orphans the Zoe's Ark group said they were.
Protests over the affair of the children, some criticising France, have taken place in Sudan and Chad.
U.N. officials and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have interviewed almost all of the 21 girls and 82 boys involved and say 91 said they were living with families consisting of at least one adult they considered their parent.
Some of the children told journalists they were lured from villages on the Chad-Sudan border with offers of sweets or schooling. Some parents said they were persuaded by foreigners to give up their children for promised education in nearby towns, but no one had mentioned flying the children to France.
Some French families have said they were waiting to foster Darfur orphans evacuated by Zoe's Ark and that they had paid up to 2,000 euros or more as a "donation" towards costs.
ICRC officials had visited the European detainees, who were able to write messages to their families.
Foreign relief workers fear the case could tarnish their image among the local population in east Chad, where around 400,000 Sudanese refugees and displaced Chadian civilians have fled several years of political and ethnic conflict.
