Word: zo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...French aid workers convicted in Chad and sentenced to an eight-year prison for attempted kidnapping will serve that full jail term in France - though with no hard labor, which under French law is banned. The ruling brings the bizarre, at times tawdry saga of humanitarian assistance group Zoé's Ark to its legal conclusion, but emotions still run high: as the judgment was read out, relatives and friends of the six shook the courtroom with cries of protest and claims of political manipulation...
...punishment compatible with French law, the Créteil court in Paris pointed out in a statement that it wasn't mandated to reexamine the case evidence or the guilty verdict handed down in Chad's capital, N'Djamena. That controversial judgment, issued on December 26, convicted the six Zoé's Ark's workers of attempted kidnapping in their efforts to secretly fly 103 children they claimed were orphans from war-torn Darfur out of eastern Chad to France for urgent care. Later investigations concluded that virtually all the children were in fact relatively healthy Chadian nationals with...
...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...