Prosecutors in Chad have brought attempted kidnapping charges against six employees of a French aid group and three French journalists over a thwarted flight that was to take 103 supposed Darfuri orphans to Europe, media reports said Tuesday.

The seven members of the Spanish flight crew from the aircraft that was to take the children to France were also charged as accomplices, Radio France Internationale said.

It was unclear if two Chadian nationals arrested with the 16 Europeans were also charged with complicity in the affair or had been released, RFI said.

The workers for the aid group L'Arche de Zoe, or Zoe's Ark, and the journalists who were travelling with them were accused of attempted child abduction and fraud. If convicted, they could be sentenced to several years of hard labour.

They were arrested Thursday as they were preparing to take off with the children from Abeche near Chad's border with Sudan.

The aid workers have insisted that they were told the children were orphans from Sudan's war-torn western region of Darfur, which borders Chad, and they were taking them out of the country for medical treatment.

But an investigation in which United Nations workers also participated found that none of the children had injuries and many of them were from Chad and may not be orphans.

Chadian President Idriss Deby has charged that the operation was "kidnapping pure and simple" and accused Zoe's Ark of wanting to "sell [the children] to paedophile organizations in Europe and even perhaps to kill them and sell their organs."

The group has denied charges that the children were to be given up for adoption.

The children are now being cared for by local and UNICEF aid workers at an orphanage in Abeche while the Europeans were transferred on Sunday to the capital N'Djamena.

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