The six were sent home last year under a long-standing accord between the two countries that lets their nationals serve their jail terms at home.

They had been sentenced to eight years' hard labour in Chad, in a case which sparked widespread local anger.

The charity Zoe's Ark says it thought the children were orphans from Darfur.

However, most of the children were found to be from Chad, which borders the war-torn western Sudanese region, and had parents who were still alive.

The French prosecutor said the court had no power to change the guilty verdict passed in Chad or reduce the sentence.

Zoe's Ark spokesman Christophe Letien told the BBC last December that he was "stunned, sickened and confused by the judgement".

"The evidence of the defence was not even taken into account. It's absolute rubbish," he said.

France does not have hard labour, so this part of the original sentence was dropped.

(BBC)

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