French woman who abducted children from Canada: I am not a terrorist

PARIS (CP) – A French woman imprisoned for abducting two of her children from their Canadian father insisted Wednesday she was “not a terrorist,” and driven only by the desire to protect them.

Nathalie Gettliffe, speaking to reporters four days after being granted provisional release from French prison, said her memory of the drama and her children “made it difficult at times to function.”

Gettliffe was convicted last month in Vancouver to 16 months in prison. She pleaded guilty to two counts of abduction, saying she took the children to France in 2001 to take them from their father because he was increasingly active in The International Church of Christ – which is banned in France as a sect.

“I am not a terrorist, I am not going to blow up the government,” she told reporters in the southeastern town of Satillieu. Excerpts of her remarks were broadcast on French TV. “I am protecting my children.”

Gettliffe, who has dual French-Canadian citizenship, was arrested in April of 2006, when she returned to Vancouver to finish a PhD in applied linguistics at the University of British Columbia.

She was pregnant while being held at a B.C. prison pending trial. Prison officials declined to discuss the birth but indicated it occurred at a nearby hospital last September.

She now has four children: two by Canadian Scott Grant, aged 12 and 13, and two by Frenchman Francis Gruzelle, aged three months and 17 months.

Gettliffe was returned to France in December to serve the rest of her term. On Friday, a French judge ruled she could be released early to care for her two younger children, but would remain under judicial surveillance.

On Saturday, she left prison with her baby.

French authorities returned the older children to Vancouver in July, reuniting them with their father.

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