Six French aid workers sentenced to eight years of forced labor in Chad for trying to kidnap 103 children left for France in handcuffs Friday to serve their terms in their own country.
The prospect that the members of Zoe's Ark would return home has sparked protests in the former French colony in central Africa, with Chadians decrying what they see as special treatment for Europeans.
Repatriation requests are allowed under a 1976 judicial accord between both countries, but France does not have forced labor for convicts. There are hopes that the French justice system will commute or reduce their sentences.
Christine Peligat, the wife of Zoe's Ark member Alain Peligat, called the transfer "a good thing" and said she and other relatives and friends would stay near the airport to welcome the aid workers home.
"What we hope for now is an adjustment of the sentences to make them as adapted as possible," she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
In October, Chadian authorities stopped the aid group's convoy with the children, who the charity was planning to fly to France. The six insisted they were driven by compassion to help orphans in Darfur, which borders Chad. Later investigations showed most of the children had at least one parent or close adult relative.
Relatives of the children testified that they believed the children were going to be educated in Chad.
"They tricked us by telling us our children would be taught here," Nassour Gardia told the court. "And then they herded them like cattle to sell in France."
The case has embarrassed France, and President Nicolas Sarkozy went to Chad in November to bring home three French journalists and four Spanish flight crew members initially charged in the case.
The scandal also had repercussions for other humanitarian workers, who say their already difficult job along Darfur's border has been complicated by the suspicion some Chadians now have toward all foreigners professing to offer help.
Days after the Zoe's Ark workers were arrested, the Republic of Congo announced it was suspending all international adoptions because of the events in Chad.
France's role in the region has already come under scrutiny in recent months as the European Union plans to send a military mission to Chad to protect refugees fleeing violence in neighboring Sudan.
The deployment of the approximately 4,300-member force, drawn largely from France, has already been delayed because of the lack of necessary equipment. Last month, a Chadian rebel group declared a "state of war" against French and other foreign armies _ an apparent warning to the EU force.
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Associated Press writers Dany Padire in N'Djamena and Natacha Rios in Paris contributed to this report.
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