N’djamena, Chad: A Chadian court convicted six French aid workers on Wednesday of trying to kidnap 103 African children and sentenced them to eight years of forced labour.

The sentence was imposed on the fourth day of the trial of the Zoe’s Ark workers, who were charged with fraud and kidnapping in October after authorities stopped a convoy with the children, whom the charity was planning to fly to France. The defendants maintain they were driven by compassion to help orphans in violence-torn Darfur, which borders Chad.

But subsequent investigations revealed most of the 103 children that Zoe’s Ark was planning to fly out were Chadians who had at least one parent or close adult relative with whom they lived.

The wife of Zoe’s Ark logistics chief Alain Peligat expressed a "feeling of injustice, of course, because this case involves doctors, rescue workers, professors — not mercenaries — and they were simply going to save lives. … The rumours were that it was going to be 10 years." The French Foreign Ministry in Paris declined to comment on a judicial verdict by another nation, but said it would ask Chadian authorities to transfer the six convicted to France.

Prosecutor Beassoum Ben Ngassoro had requested the aid workers receive seven to 11 years of forced labour.

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