Six French aid workers sentenced to hard labour in Chad for trying to kidnap 103 children flew to France on Friday, where they are due to serve their sentences in jail.

France invoked a 1976 judicial co-operation treaty with its former colony to obtain the quick transfer home of the six, who were sentenced by a Chadian criminal court on Wednesday to eight years’ hard labour for abduction. The four men and two women from the humanitarian group Zoe’s Ark flew out of N’Djamena airport escorted by French officials.