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  5 French Men up for Child Sex

News 24
April 7, 2008

http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_2301515,00.html

Djibouti - Djibouti on Monday issued international arrest warrants for five French nationals, two of whom held senior positions in the Horn of Africa nation, for sexually abusing children, an investigator said.

The accused included two senior advisors to former president Hassan Gouled Aptidon, who ruled from 1977 to 1999, a priest and two schoolteachers, said Abdoulkader Ibrahim Issack, the investigating magistrate handling the case.

Issack said that the mandates he issued arose from complaints filed last year by two citizens of the small former French colony on the Gulf of Aden, who were aged in their twenties.

According to them, the French nationals accused sexually abused school pupils and street children placed in their care.

Issack said the five French nationals "have been summoned in relation to the case, but none of them has responded so far".

Several former French diplomats and military personnel were under investigation for alleged child sex, he said.

Relations between Djibouti and former colonial ruler France had been strained after a French court sentenced two close aides of President Ismael Omar Guelleh to jail terms in absentia for bribing witnesses in a probe into the 1995 murder of a French investigating magistrate, Bernard Borrel.

Borrel's half-burned body was found at the foot of a ravine 80km from the town of Djibouti in October 1995.

His widow Elisabeth Borrel believed her husband was murdered by Djibouti agents and that France helped the Djibouti authorities cover up the crime, which had been officially dismissed as suicide.

 
 

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