(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-12-27 10:34

"They're not criminals ... It's a masquerade ... I'm very worried about the future of my daughter," she said.

Besides Lelouch, the other French sentenced to hard labor were Eric Breteau, the Zoe's Ark leader, Nadia Merimi, Alain Peligat, Dominique Aubry and Philippe Van Winkelberg.

They rejected the abduction and fraud charges against them.

They testified they believed the children were orphans from Sudan's war-torn Darfur region whom they intended to give to European families for fostering. They said international law justified the humanitarian operation.

Defense lawyers had accused the Chadian court of rushing through the trial under political pressure from Paris.

France is an ally of Deby and has a military contingent stationed in the landlocked former French colony.

French troops have been supporting Deby's forces against eastern rebels and will provide the bulk of a European Union peacekeeping force due to be deployed in east Chad in January.

Chad's government has said the six did not have permission to take the children out of the country.

Prosecutors said the group duped parents in eastern Chad into handing over their children with promises of schooling.

The French have blamed local intermediaries for misleading them over the identity of the children, who Chadian and UN officials said were mostly not orphans and came from villages in Chad on its eastern border with Darfur.

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