Six French aid workers sentenced to eight years’ hard labour in Chad for attempting to kidnap 103 children are to be sent home today after an intervention from Paris.

Albert Pahimi Padacke, Chad’s justice minister, said he had responded “favourably” to France’s request that the group be transferred as it came under the auspices of a 1976 repatriation agreement between the two countries. The members of Zoe’s Ark, a children’s charity, will return to France on a special flight today, a Chadian official said later.

Yesterday the French government asked Chad to hand over the six, who were convicted and sentenced on Wednesday.

France must jail the convicts once they reach home soil, according to the 1976 agreement with its former colony, but it does not practise forced labour and there are hopes that the sentences will be reduced or commuted.

Potential for further diplomatic wrangling remains as the Chadian government has made clear it expects to have the last word on any change to the group’s sentences. “What is clear is that any commutation of the sentence in this domain cannot be done without the accord of the Chadian authorities,” Mr Padake told French radio RTL.

Meanwhile a Zoe’s Ark spokesman said he was reserving his reaction until the aid workers land back in France.

“Since Wednesday night, they were supposedly coming home at any moment,” Christophe Letien said. “It changes from one minute to the next. I will react once they are aboard the plane, or even after they land here.”

The group was detained in October after Chadian authorities stopped a convoy in which they were smuggling 103 young children. The six, who were planning to fly the children to France, claimed that they were orphans from neighbouring Darfur, and that their act was one of compassion. Later investigations showed most of the children were Chadian and had at least one parent or close adult relative.

Lawyers for the group blamed intermediaries for tricking the charity into taking Chadian children. Two local workers, a Chadian and a Sudanese, were also sentenced to four years in prison.

The eight convicted were also ordered to pay 4.12 billion CFA francs (6.3 million euros) to the families caught up in the affair. All the defendants had protested their innocence.

Just before the end of the trial one of the workers, Eric Breteau, apologised to any Chadian parents who had been separated from their children, but insisted he and his colleagues had acted in good faith.

The children, who have been in the custody of an orphanage in the eastern Chadian town of Abeche since October, will now be allowed to return to their families.

The case has embarrassed France and sparked protests in Chad, which has a relationship with its former colonial master. Aid workers say their already difficult job along Chad’s border with conflict-ridden Darfur has been complicated by the suspicions many Chadians now harbour toward all foreigners professing to offer help.

France’s role in the region has already come under scrutiny in recent months it pushes for the European Union to send a military mission to Chad to protect refugees fleeing violence in Sudan. Since 2003 over 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced by the ethnic conflict in the vast Darfur region, which has been described as genocide by the United States.

The deployment of the approximately 4,300-member force, drawn largely from France, has already been delayed because of a lack of equipment. Last month, in an apparent warning to the EU force, a Chadian rebel group declared a “state of war” against French and other foreign armies.

Others in the region have also begun to close ranks, with the Republic of Congo announcing a suspension of international adoptions due to the attempted abduction.

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