The six French citizens detained last week for the attempt of kidnapping 103 African children were charged by the authorities of Chad on Monday.

Justice Minister Pahimi Padacket Albert said that the judge in Abeche allowed for the charges to be pressed on the three journalists involved as well. According to the Associated Press, the Spanish crew members would also face charges of complicity.

The 16 Europeans were detained last week when they were trying to take 103 children out of Chad in order to place them into French families. According to their sayings, the children were orphans from the war zone Darfur and were to stay only temporarily in France.

The six French citizens are members of the Zoe’s Ark charity organization. They are facing 5 to 20 years of hard labor if they are convicted in Chad.

Mariam Coulibaly Ndiaye, UNICEF’s representative in Chad, said that the children were interviewed by the authorities to see if they were really orphans or from villages in Chad.

Chadian President Idriss Deby said about the incident that was “straightforward kidnapping” and he promised that the Europeans will be harshly punished. He also assured French President Nicolas Sarkozy that this incident should not affect EU plans to help refugees at the border with Darfur.

The European Union recently authorized a plan to deploy 3,000 peacekeepers on Darfur’s borders with Chad. Because of the violence in the Darfur zone, many people fled the area into Chad and Central African Republic.

According to Associated Press, Rama Yade, French Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Human Rights, said: “Because this affair has nothing to do with the deployment of the multidimensional force, there are no possible consequences.”

The charity’s office was searched by police officers in France to see if it broke any adoption laws. Allegedly the group promised French families that they could adopt the children from Darfur. The organization was warned a few months ago by French diplomats about this action.

One of the charity’s spokespersons, Christophe Letien, said that their intentions were only humanitarian, as they wanted to save the children. In a news conference he said: “The team is made up of firemen, doctors and journalists. It’s unimaginable that doubts are being cast on these people of good faith, who volunteered to save children from Darfur.”

Apparently two of the three journalists were covering the story and the third had personal reasons to be present.