A Chadian court convicted six French aid workers of trying to kidnap 103 African children and sentenced them to eight years of forced labor.
The sentence was imposed on Wednesday, 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 Darfur, which borders Chad. An uprising that flared in Darfur in 2003 has led to the deaths of more than 200,000 people and forced 2.5 million to flee.
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 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. The countries have a bilateral judicial agreement that could allow for the six to be transferred home.
Jeannine Lelouch, mother of detained Zoe's Ark member Emilie Lelouch, said she was "devastated" by the verdict, telling France's LCI television, "You have to hope that they'll quickly return to France because they aren't holding up on their feet anymore."
Celine Lorenzon, a lawyer for the six defendants, called the sentence "a judicial masquerade."
"We head back this evening with the feeling that Chad's justice system didn't do its job," she said on France-Info radio.
Defense lawyer Gilbert Collard said on France-3: "There is a political power that is using this case to ease tensions that exist with its community and applying this big-spectacle trial to make people believe there's justice -- when there isn't."
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