An attempt to fly more than a hundred “orphans” from Darfur to homes in France ended in fiasco yesterday when Chad jailed nine French citizens and their charity was accused of trafficking children.

As dozens of would-be host families waited in vain at an airport near Rheims, confusion surrounded Children Rescue, an operation that had been publicised for months but appears to have flouted basic laws on children and immigration.

France, Chad and Unicef, the UN children’s organistion, denounced the rescue as illegal and a criminal inquiry was opened in Paris. But Zoe’s Ark, a small charity based near Paris, insisted that it had mounted the action with humanitarian motives to save children’s lives and that they were not destined for adoption.

The affair began on Thursday when the authorities at Abéché, in eastern Chad near the Darfur border, blocked the departure of an aircraft chartered by Zoe’s Ark. The children, aged between 1 and 9, were to be the first of 1,000 that the charity aimed to bring from the war-ravaged region of Sudan. Six escorts and three French journalists accompanying them were accused of child smuggling.

Idris Deby, the Chadian President, visited the children at a home in Abéché yesterday and promised “severe punishment” for what he called the “inhumane, unthinkable and unacceptable” conduct of those accompanying them.

Mr Deby said: “It is a horrible act which I say is a crime. I strongly condemn it,” he said. “All administrative and judicial steps will be taken so that these people and their accomplices pay for their actions.”

Chad’s Interior Minister said that some of the children were Chadian and not all were orphans.

The children had been cared for by the charity’s staff in Darfur for the past month, it said. Zoe’s Ark also said that Chad security forces had severely beaten its detained personnel.

The French families, who had each paid about €1,400 for the right to care for the children, were angered to be seen as victims of fraud or exploiters of misery. “We are devastated,” said Delphine Philibert, one of those waiting at Rheims-Vatry airport. “To think that the authorities can suspect us of playing a role in the trafficking of children is totally ignoble,” she said.

Christine Peligat, 42, an education counsellor whose teacher husband was among those arrested in Chad, said that she had been hoping to welcome a five-year-old girl. “There is no doubt that this is a serious association,” she said of Zoe’s Ark. “This is an aberration. It’s inconceivable to talk about child-trafficking,” she told The Times.

The French Government confirmed that it had been aware of the operation for months and had repeatedly warned Zoe’s Ark, which was founded by a group of firemen in 2004, to obey Sudanese and international law.

Rama Yade, a junior Foreign Minister who travelled to Darfur this week, said: “We know absolutely nothing about how these children were gathered. We don’t know their origins, their nationality or the reality of their family situation. Taking them like this is illegal and irresponsible.”

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