9 held in alleged adoption scheme
Police in Chad arrested nine French people as they prepared to fly more than 100 children to France to have them adopted, Chad’s government and French diplomats said.
They included the head of Zoe’s Ark, a group that said this year that it intended to bring orphans from Sudan’s Darfur region to France for adoption.
Chad’s interior minister, Ahmat Mahamat Bachir, said the nine French citizens were arrested at Abeche airport in eastern Chad. He also said that Chadian children were among the 103, ages 3 to 8, and that not all of them were orphans.
A French envoy said French and Belgian families paid to have the children flown to an airport in Vatry, 75 miles east of Paris.
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