Six French aid workers went on trial in Chad yesterday charged with attempting to kidnap 103 African children on a humanitarian mission which ended in fiasco.

The members of the French charity Zoe’s Ark who appeared in court in N’Djamena along with their alleged accomplices, three Chadians and a Sudanese man, face a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail if found guilty.

They were arrested in October as they prepared to fly out of eastern Chad with children whom they depicted as orphans from Darfur, the war-torn region of neighbouring Sudan. Investigators say that the children are, in fact, Chadian and most have at least one parent.

French media reported that President Sarkozy had agreed a deal with Idriss Déby, his Chadian counterpart, to bring the charity workers back to Paris next week under an agreement which will enable them to serve their sentences in France. Speaking from his prison cell before the hearing, Eric Bréteau, 36, the founder of Zoe’s Ark, described the legal process as a “mascarade”.

“We’ve already been given a detailed timetable: the trial begins on December 21, we’re found guilty on the 26th, I get ten years and we’re repatriated on the 30th,” he said.

Mr Bréteau’s lawyers are reportedly exasperated with him for disclosing a deal that is likely to inflame public opinion in Chad, where anti-French sentiment has been stirred by the controversy. Mr Sarkozy has already angered Chadian officials and commentators by saying that he would bring home the aid workers “whatever they have done”.

The families of the children allegedly kidnapped say that they entrusted the 82 boys and 21 girls to Zoe’s Ark after being told that they would be enrolled in a school in Abéché, a city in eastern Chad. They claim they never suspected that the children would be flown to France, where foster families were waiting. Maître Laminal Ndjintamandji, the families’ lawyer, said: “In the east of the country we don’t like whites too much because of the colonial past. These people would never have let the children leave for France.”

French justice has begun a separate inquiry amid claims that childless couples in France had paid at least €2,000 (£1,500) each to Zoe’s Ark in the hope of adopting the “Darfur orphans”. French newspapers portray Mr Bréteau and his fellow workers as overzealous amateurs with little knowledge of Africa or of humanitarian operations. Bernard Kouchner, the French Foreign Minister, has described them as zozos, or nitwits.

Times Recommends

• Times Charity Appeal: SolarAid
• Is it Black Monday all over again for Dubai?
• Behind the scenes at the biggest deal