Kidnapped Chadian kids to go home

N'DJAMENA, Chad (CNN) -- They marshaled presidents, sparked worldwide debate, and put an international peacekeeping force in jeopardy, but the biggest concern for more than 100 children stranded in an orphanage in remote eastern Chad is to return home.

Five months after the children were taken from their homes they are finally being reunited with their families.

The then-obscure French charity, L'Arche de Zoe (Zoe's Ark), claimed the children were orphans from the Darfur region of Sudan.

The group, which registered under the name "Children's Rescue" in Chad, planned to place the orphans with foster families in France.

But Chadian authorities stopped the charity just before it departed with its first planeload of children from Abeche, in eastern Chad, after it was discovered that most of the children were from Chad, not Darfur, and had at least one living parent.

Both Chadian and French authorities swiftly criticized the charity's actions.

The head of Zoe's Ark, Eric Breteau, and five others were tried, convicted of attempted kidnapping and sentenced to eight years of hard labor in Chad.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy flew into the central African nation and appealed directly to embattled Chadian President Idriss Deby to let the French citizens carry out equivalent sentences in France.

In late December they were flown on a charter flight to France and sent to French jails.

Though Zoe's Ark claimed the children were Darfur refugees, UNICEF and other agencies in Chad quickly established that the majority of the children were Chadian.

Zoe's Ark went to remote villages in Chad and apparently told families that they were taking the children to Abeche to get a free education, says UNICEF Chad communications head Cifora Monier.

According to Monier, the charity left precious little paperwork on the children, who range in age from one to 10 years old, and tracing their families was a painstaking process.

Without birth certificates or any other paperwork, social workers and aid officials had to travel to surrounding areas to trace the children's origins.

Efforts to find the parents were also hampered by a February offensive on the capital by rebels trying to oust Deby. Sprays of bullet holes in buildings surrounding the U.N. offices in N'Djamena attest to the unsuccessful rebel push.

Now that relative calm has returned to the country, a host of international and local agencies plan to bus 97 of the children to their families in Adre and Tine on the volatile Chad/Sudan border in the coming days.

Six of the children are from Darfur and will remain in an Abeche orphanage.

The incident has severely strained French and Chadian relations at a time that the 3,700-strong EU peacekeeping force is charged with a mandate to protect refugees from Sudan in Chad and the Central African Republic.

But for the children that were taken from their homes and families, the main concern will just be making the perilous journey home. E-mail to a friend

All About Chad • France • Kidnapping • Zoe's Ark • UNICEF