Zoe's Ark workers returned to France

PARIS, Dec. 28 (UPI) -- The six French aid workers accused of kidnapping children from African refugee camps in Chad have arrived in France to serve their prison sentences.

Chadian officials sentenced four men and two women with the charitable organization Zoe's Ark to eight years of hard labor for allegedly kidnapping 103 children from their families and trying to send them to Europe.

The convicted pleaded not guilty, claiming benevolence in their actions in trying to rescue orphans from Sudan's war-torn Darfur region, the Daily Telegraph said Friday.

The French aid workers claim local officials duped them into attempting to foster the children in Europe although many of the children were not orphans and living with parents or close relatives.

Officials in Chad sentenced two local officials, a Chadian and a Sudanese, to four years for "complicity in attempted kidnap of children," the newspaper said.

Chad released the aid workers to French custody under a 1976 bilateral accord. They likely will serve shorter sentences in France and not perform hard labor, the BBC reported.