Prometheus 6

African Orphans Weren’t, U.N. Says
By LYDIA POLGREEN

DAKAR, Senegal, Nov. 1 — Virtually all of the children a French aid group tried to fly out of ChadUnited Nations said Thursday. last week had been living with family members in villages and were not orphans of the Darfur conflict, as the group claimed, the

That finding was based on interviews conducted with some of the 103 children as the government and aid groups try to figure out where they came from and how to reunite them with their families. The plane carrying the children was stopped moments before it was scheduled to take off from Abéché, a small, dust-choked city that is the base of operations for dozens of aid groups working in eastern Chad.

“These were not orphans in the desert,” said Annette Rehrl, a spokeswoman for the United Nations refugee agency. “They were living with their families.”

A French aid organization, Zoé’s Ark, had claimed that the children were sick, hungry and abandoned, and had raised money from European families to rescue the children and place them temporarily in French homes. But checkups showed the children to be in good condition, Ms. Rehrl said.

“In the context of Chad these are healthy, well-fed children,” she said.

Six French aid workers and seven Spaniards serving as crew members of the plane that was to take the children to France on Oct. 25 have been arrested and charged with attempted kidnapping and fraud. Interviews were conducted with those children old enough to talk, and many were able to give basic information about where they had come from and with whom they lived, Ms. Rehrl said. But because the children are so young — they range between 1 and 10 years old — gathering specific information has proved difficult.

“When you ask a child what is his father’s name, he will say Daddy, not Robert or Muhammad,” said Inah Kaloga of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Using photographs and information in interviews the organization hopes to find the children’s families and reunite them, Ms. Kaloga said.

The majority of the children came from Chadian villages along the border with Sudan, but aid officials were not able to say if the children were Chadians or Sudanese. The border is long and porous, and the violence in Darfur, in western Sudan, and in eastern Chad has pushed residents of both countries into each other’s territory.