A judge in Chad denied bail Wednesday to six French charity workers at the centre of a child abduction case that sparked violent anti-French protests in the capital Ndjamena. The judge ruled that the defendants, along with three Chadians charged in the same case, should remain in custody.
"In view of the seriousness of the charges, allowing the accused to go free on bail would carry a public order risk and could hamper the truth coming out," the judge said. The hearing in Ndjamena coincided with a violent protest by several hundred demonstrators who chanted anti-French slogans and threw stones at cars carrying westerners.
The protest lasted about two hours, before it was broken up by police using tear gas. The French embassy issued a warning to French citizens in Ndjamena, telling them to exercise especial caution and to stick to the centre of the city.
Public anger in Chad has flared over what many see as French efforts to intervene in the case of the six charity workers arrested over an attempt to fly 103 children to France.
The charity said the children were orphans from Sudan's war-torn Darfur region who it planned to place in foster care with families in Europe. But Chad says the group did not have permission to take the children out of the country, and aid agencies who have since cared for the children said that most of them are Chadian and have at least one living parent. The charity workers face kidnapping charges which could result in lengthy prison sentences with hard labour.
The demonstrators who took to the streets Wednesday, some of them on motorbikes, protested in front of the French embassy-heavily guarded by Chadian police-as well as the French school in Ndjamena.