Mathias Victorien Ntep
18 April 2008
opinion
Frankfurt — Eric Breteau, the Chairman of the notorious "The Ark of Zoe", which NGO which dominated the news some six months back in connection with alleged kidnapping of orphans from the Darfur region, spilt the beans the other day by claiming that French officials backed their endeavour to surreptitiously extricate 103 orphans from that region to convey them to France.
A couple of days after receiving the presidential pardon of President Idriss Deby Itno from Chad, Breteau at last has voiced and couched his side of the story. He has opined that advisers to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France as well as officials of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bernard Kouchner, were not only privy to and aware of their agenda, but also gave them the go-ahead and the backing to take orphans from the Darfur region to foster families in France.
It should be noted that Deby grant the members of The Ark of Zoe presidential pardon because France staved off the overthrow of his regime.Breteau alleged that it was agreed on that Sarkozy's ex-wife, Cecilia Sarkozy, and the French Minister of Justice, Attorney General Rachida Dati, would officially welcome the said children at an airport in Paris.
The whole caboodle was designed to kick up a fuss that would call the attention of the international public opinion to the dreadful plight and emergency Darfur was going through.
But "The Ark" contends that its members only wanted to provide those orphans with assistance on the basis of the Geneva Convention on Humanitarian Rights.
It later turned out that most of the children were from Chad, and not from Sudan, as it was previously hinted. Moreover, many weren't even orphans and they were hale and hearty.
Meanwhile, the Sudanese government recently initiated legal proceedings against The Ark of Zoe.
The French Minister of Justice had already directed the public prosecution in Paris to see into the shady dealings of The Ark. But the snag the Sudanese are stumbling across is France's principle never to extradite her citizens. The Sudanese claim that 18 of the kids were actually from Sudan.
Be that as it may, it is obvious that French officials were aware of that operation. The fact that Rama Yade, the French Assistant Minister in charge of Human Rights, had maintained that the Parisian authorities had endeavoured to dissuade the French adventurers from embarking on that operation, adduces positive evidence that they were privy to that adventure.
Breteau intends to sue Rama Yade for calumny because she called that operation "irresponsible and illegal" when the whole world took cognizance of it. If they hadn't backed or not at least condoned it, why didn't the French authorities pre-empt it by impeding them from carrying it out?
The French Minister of Justice has denied over the ether of a Parisian radio station that she hadn't known anything about the rescue of the children of Darfur. She has even averred that France would not pay the 6 millions euros The Ark of Zoe is supposed to pay as fine and damage caused to the private prosecution within the framework of their operation.
Now then, according to an agreement between Chad and France dating back to 1976, France is supposed to make sure that such financial damage springing from private prosecution is paid.
This whole skulduggery demonstrates that the "New African Policy of France" betokened and given a plug by President Sarkozy heretofore has proven to be somewhat dithery. As the saying goes, "What is bred in the bone comes out in the flesh."
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