Word: ark
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...criminal court in the Chadian capital of N'Djamena deliberated for only a few hours Monday evening before finding the six employees of Zoé's Ark, a France-based children's aid group, guilty of attempted kidnapping. All six were sentenced to eight years of hard labor. The verdict came two months after Chadian police arrested a total of 17 people working with Zoé's Ark in the eastern town of Abéché as they prepared an unauthorized airlift of 103 children to France, where they were to receive medical care and be placed in foster...
...With Monday's conviction, it's now time for Sarkozy to make good on that pledge. Judicial accords between France and Chad make transferrals of convicts virtually mandatory once prisoners have requested return to their home nations. The six Zoé's Ark workers made such a petition just hours after their trial closed, leading some legal experts to anticipate their delivery to French authorities within days. Recent cases of convicts returned to serve sentences delivered by foreign courts suggest that Zoé's Ark staffers would probably serve only about half of their sentences. They would also be spared...
...return of the six to France won't produce general relief, much less joy. Families and supporters of the Zoé's Ark convicts are still railing at what they call a Chadian show-trial, and accuse Paris of failing to provide sufficient assistance and protection to what they say are blameless humanitarian officials. They contend the staffers were trapped in the shifting political sands surrounding the Darfur crisis - particularly the deployment of French-led peacekeeping forces to the Chad-Sudan border region, a move that Chadian authorities resent. Public opinion in Chad, on the other hand, has broadly accused...
...Sentiment in France generally lies somewhere between those two extremes. Zoé's Ark staff were condemned at first as buffoons who sought to play God by scorning international law. But more recently French public opinion softened as family members mounted an energetic communications offensive arguing the suspects' innocence. Television scenes of Chadian riot police keeping furious crowds from the accused, meanwhile, have also raised some French fears over their safety - a concern Chadians have denounced as neo-colonial. Elsewhere, some onlookers - including French officials working for the return of the six to France - remain troubled by the lack...
...treatment development. Moreover, taxpayer dollars weren't used to fund the destruction of human life in that time. It was a moral stand President George W. Bush made. Let's move on with consensus on this new research. Ronald Simpson, M.D.,University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, MOUNTAIN VIEW, ARK...