Six French Convicts In Chad To Fly Home Friday

French humanitarians will probably serve their jail terms in France

 Six French aid workers sentenced to hard labour in Chad for trying to kidnap 103 children were being flown to France on Friday to serve their terms there, a Chadian justice ministry official said.

The four men and two women from the humanitarian group Zoe's Ark were to be flown out of the former French colony escorted by French prison staff on a plane chartered by Paris.

The aid workers were sentenced on Wednesday to eight years' hard labour for abduction. France requested that they be allowed to serve their jail terms there under a 1976 cooperation accord.

"The minister is in the process of preparing their departure now," an aide to Justice Minister Albert Pahimi Padacke told Reuters.

One of the defence lawyers, Abdou Lamian, said the departure was "imminent".

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is on holiday in Egypt and had personally lobbied for the six to be returned to France, spoke by phone on Thursday with Chadian President Idriss Deby, French officials said.

The aid workers were arrested in October as they tried to fly the children, aged one to 10, from eastern Chad to Europe for fostering with families there.

The workers said they had been on a humanitarian mission to rescue orphans from Sudan's war-torn Darfur region, across Chad's eastern border.

But most of the 103 children were found to have come from families in Chadian border villages who were persuaded to give up the infants with promises of education at local centres.

The case embarrassed France, which is a key backer of Deby. French troops and planes stationed in Chad have been giving logistical and intelligence support to his armed forces fighting rebels in the east.

France is also the main contributor of troops to a European Union peace force preparing to deploy in eastern Chad to protect thousands of Sudanese refugees and displaced Chadian civilians.

ANTI-FRENCH PROTESTS

The Zoe's Ark case sparked anti-French protests in the Chadian capital N'Djamema and in Abeche in the east.

Many Chadians were angry over what they saw as meddling by Sarkozy, who flew to Chad in early November to collect three French journalists and four Spanish flight attendants who were freed after being arrested along with the Zoe's Ark six.

Under pressure from Paris and Madrid, Chad also freed three remaining Spanish aircrew and a Belgian pilot who had been detained in the case.

Being flown to France means the convicted aid workers will be spared hard labour, which no longer exists in France.

But they may face law suits lodged by families who had offered to look after the children in Europe. Diplomats say some of them paid several thousand euros (dollars) per child.

It is not clear what effect the repatriation will have on the 4.12 billion CFA franc ($9 million) in compensation that the Chadian court ordered the convicted aid workers to pay the children's families.