{"id":31592,"date":"2017-01-04T23:45:40","date_gmt":"2017-01-04T23:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/no-charges-for-french-troops-over-car-child-sex\/"},"modified":"2017-01-04T23:45:34","modified_gmt":"2017-01-04T23:45:34","slug":"no-charges-for-french-troops-over-car-child-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/no-charges-for-french-troops-over-car-child-sex\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;No charges&#8217; for French troops over CAR child sex allegations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Six French soldiers accused of sexually abusing children in the Central African Republic (CAR) have not been charged following a criminal inquiry.}<\/p>\n<p>Investigating judges found no evidence to warrant further investigation, the prosecutor&#8217;s office in Paris confirmed to the BBC.<\/p>\n<p>The assaults allegedly took place at a camp for displaced people near the airport in the capital Bangui.<\/p>\n<p>French soldiers were sent to CAR after the outbreak of the civil war in 2013.<\/p>\n<p>The assaults allegedly took place between December 2013 and June 2014.<\/p>\n<p>The prosecutor&#8217;s office make the final decision over the charges, but its decision is expected to reflect the finding of the judges,<\/p>\n<p>There is however a three-month window for interested parties to demand fresh investigations.<\/p>\n<p>The UN whistleblower who exposed the allegations in 2015 condemned what he called the &#8220;complete impunity&#8221; of the perpetrators, and criticised the UN for failing to properly investigate.<\/p>\n<p>There are still other investigations taking place into alleged abuses carried out by French and UN peacekeepers in the CAR.<\/p>\n<p>A 2015 study by independent experts revealed &#8220;gross institutional failure&#8221; by the UN in the way it responded to abuse allegations.<\/p>\n<p>The study said that children as young as nine were encouraged to have sex in exchange for food or money by troops stationed in the conflict-hit country.<\/p>\n<p>France withdrew its force from CAR in October, saying they succeeded in the mission to stop fighting in the country.<\/p>\n<p>However, some 350 French soldiers stayed behind to provide back up to Minusca, the UN mission in CAR.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-17465 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_93268818_french1.jpg\" alt=\"French troops were accused of abusing children as young as nine\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Six French soldiers accused of sexually abusing children in the Central African Republic (CAR) have not been charged following a criminal inquiry.} Investigating judges found no evidence to warrant further investigation, the prosecutor&#8217;s office in Paris confirmed to the BBC. The assaults allegedly took place at a camp for displaced people near the airport in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-31592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31592"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=31592"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=31592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}