CHAD:Six French aid workers arrested in Chad while attempting to fly more than 100 children out of the country are likely to be jailed, Chadian authorities said yesterday.
President Idriss Deby has promised "severe punishment" for what he has described as a "kidnapping" or "child-trafficking" operation.
Interior minister Ahmat Mahamat Bachir said a judge was expected to charge the six French nationals with child abduction.
"For us, abduction is more than a crime. They could be put in jail for several years," he added.
Ten other people have been held in the eastern town of Abeche close to the border with Sudan, including three French journalists and the seven Spanish crew members of the plane chartered by the charity, named as Zoe's Ark.
The children were due to be placed in host families in France. Those families had paid Zoe's Ark several thousand euros. The charity had previously stated that it planned to have the children adopted, but it has since refrained from referring to adoption, which is illegal in Chad and Sudan.
It insists the 103 children are orphans from the Darfur, a region of Sudan devastated by a war that has left more than 200,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced.
However, the president of the French national committee for Unicef said 48 of the children questioned so far appeared to be from the border areas of Chad, not Sudan.
"Our impression is that the majority aren't orphans, but at this stage it's just an impression," Jacques Hintzy told Radio Television Luxembourg.
France's foreign ministry issued a warning about Zoe's Ark in August, casting doubts on the project's legality and saying there was no guarantee the children were orphans.
A lawyer for Zoe's Ark insisted the charity had good intentions. "We are dealing with humanitarian hardliners who walked off the beaten track," Gilbert Collard said. "They wanted to do things differently - that doesn't mean they wanted to do it dishonestly."
Some children have reportedly claimed they were lured from their villages with offers of sweets. Most are believed to be between three and five years old, with the oldest around eight or nine.
Chad's media ran lurid stories on the incident yesterday, with some claiming the children were being spirited away to Europe to be used for medical experiments. Others speculated that the children had been taken as part of an organ- selling racket.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy described the charity's actions as illegal and unacceptable.
The French human rights minister, Rama Yade, said the charity had been "irresponsible" but added that France would offer those detained "maximum consular assistance".