PARIS - Six French aid workers sentenced to eight years' forced labour in Chad for trying to kidnap 103 children left for France on Friday, boarding a plane in handcuffs as security officers looked on.
The members of Zoe's Ark were transported to an airstrip in a prison van before taking off.
On Thursday, France asked Chad to hand over the six, who were convicted and sentenced Wednesday. Repatriation requests are allowed under a 1976 judicial accord between the two countries.
France does not have forced labour for convicts and there are hopes that if the six are returned, the French justice system will commute or reduce their sentences.
A Zoe's Ark spokesman said he was reserving reaction until the aid workers actually land back in France.
"Since Wednesday night, they were supposedly coming home at any moment," Christophe Letien told The Associated Press by phone. "It changes from one minute to the next."
"I will react once they are aboard the plane, or even after they land here."
Without confirming that the aid workers would be returned Friday, the office of President Nicolas Sarkozy said he spoke Thursday night by phone with Chadian President Idriss Deby about preparations for their transfer.
In October, Chadian authorities stopped the aid group's convoy with the children, whom 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.
The case has embarrassed France and sparked protests in Chad, a former French colony.
Aid workers 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.
