Eight Croatian adoptive parents will be able to defend themselves from freedom with bail and several other conditions, the court in Zambia decided today, Croatian media reported.
Jutarnji list on the portal states that in order to defend themselves from freedom, as in the first case, they will have to pay a bail of about 1.100 dollars per person, hand over their passports and regulate their temporary stay.
Last week, a Zambian court issued a new indictment against eight Croatian citizens for attempting to traffic children from DR Congo.
The new indictment also charges the immigration officer at the airport in Ndola, and the proceedings are led by a new judge. At the hearing on Friday, they all pleaded not guilty, and a new hearing is scheduled for March 1.
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Four Croatian couples were arrested at the beginning of December at the airport in Ndola, Zambia, on suspicion of attempted human trafficking, i.e. possessing false papers on the adoption of four children from the DR Congo aged one to three.
The adopted children were taken from them, and they were taken over by Zambia's social services, and since then neither the Croatian embassy official nor the adoptive parents have been allowed to visit them.
In the meantime, the Croatian authorities have confirmed that the four children have Croatian papers and that the adoption has been recognized by the courts in Croatia.
Eight Croats who traveled to Zambia to take over their adopted children were released in mid-January to defend themselves after they paid bail and met all the conditions set by the court.
Early last week, a court in Ndola dismissed the charge and ordered them to leave the country within 48 hours.
However, they were arrested again just one day later at the airport in Ndola before their flight to Croatia.
Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said that Croatia will continue to help Croatian citizens.
"It is an unusual, but possible situation according to the local regulations," Plenković said at the government meeting in Zagreb.
Minister of Justice Ivan Malenica said it was "strange" that the Croats were arrested again only a day after the indictment was withdrawn, and they were ordered to leave the country within 48 hours.
He assessed that the situation is serious and added that he is worried. Malenica announced that he will continue to work with the Zambian side to resolve the status of children adopted by Croatian couples.
Croatian legal experts pointed out that Croatia is a signatory to the Hague Convention, which regulates the issue of interstate adoption, but that in this case we are talking about an adoption from a country that is not a signatory to that convention.
The competent Croatian minister, Marin Piletić, said that 131 children were adopted in Croatia from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and that some other couples are currently in the process of adopting children from that country.
They received recommendations on how to avoid similar situations, the minister said, and announced that the law regulating interstate adoptions will be amended in such a way that all requests that come to Croatian courts for the recognition of interstate adoptions should be additionally checked.
According to the information known so far, in the case of the arrested Croats, it is not clear exactly what kind of documents were obtained in the Congo and what is disputed in them, that is, why the Zambian authorities considered them false.
The media reminds us that in the Congo, the ban on intercountry adoption has been in force for years, but that in practice it is different.
Due to the length of the procedure in Croatia, in recent years more and more Croatian citizens are turning to adopting children from other countries.
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