(Ebru News/AP)Seven crew members of a plane contracted to fly more than 100 children out of Chad were detained and Chad's president promised punishment for anyone involved in a plan to spirit the children to Europe.
President Idriss Deby travelled on Friday to the eastern city of Abeche where 103 children were being cared for after authorities arrested nine French citizens, who had attempted to fly them to France.
Deby accused the crew of helping paedophile organisations.
"This is in my opinion obvious from what I've seen, from what I've seen here and I would never have wanted in my life to see this. Or perhaps they would have killed them and sold their organs," Deby said.
Deby said he was traumatised by what he saw.
"The entire world needs to witness this. We are going to take all the necessary steps, administrative and judicial to shed light on the kidnapping of the children from Chad and Sudanese refugees."
The French aid group L'Arche de Zoe, or Zoe's Arc, said it had arranged French host families for the children. It said they were orphans from Sudan's Darfur region.
But the head of UNICEF France, Jacques Hintzy, said on Saturday that many of the children appeared to be from Chad, not Sudan.
He also said the children were given bandages to provide the impression their evacuation was health-related, though none was injured.
Deby also met with the nine French workers and the flight crew.
The pilot Agustin Rey Torre told the Chadian President that they had "a humanitarian permit from Chad 1489. That's all we know."
Deby later accused the pilot of "actively helping paedophile organisations" an allegation which Torre denied.
"You will get the penalty you deserve," Deby told him.
Spanish media reported that seven Spanish crew members, four men and three women, belonging to Barcelona-based air charter company Girjet were detained in Chad and that their passports and mobile phones were confiscated.
The company said it had guaranteed transport out of Chad for the children, but that it was not otherwise involved in the plan, media reported.
Chad's government spokesman, Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor, said all the foreigners would be transferred on Monday from Abeche to the capital, N'djamena, where the investigation would continue.
Doumgor said authorities were trying to ascertain the family status of each of the children, and that officials would search the refugee camps along the Chad-Darfur border to find their parents.
Hintzy said the organisation was questioning each of the children and it appeared that the 48 questioned so far were Chadian children, not Sudanese.
Hintzy said that his impression was that most children were not orphans, adding that UNICEF, the UN child protection agency, would try to find the children's' families.
Rama Yade, France's junior minister for human rights, said the attempted transport of the children was illegal and irresponsible.
The French foreign ministry warned French citizens months ago against taking in children from Darfur, saying aid groups in the Sudanese region opposed the appeal by Zoe's Arc.
Diplomatic officials have said that such an evacuation mission could infringe on national laws and threatened to exploit the troubles of the children in the region.
Stephanie Lefebvre, secretary-general of Zoe's Arc, said the group asked host families for 3,400 US dollars each to pay for the operation's logistics, but that some gave much less.
She stressed that the families were not adopting the children, but merely taking them in.
The Darfur region has suffered 4? years of conflict that has left more than 200-thousand people dead and 2.5 (m) million displaced.
The violence began when ethnic African rebels in Darfur took up arms against the Arab-led government in 2003, accusing it of decades of discrimination and neglect.
The Sudanese government is accused of retaliating by unleashing a militia of Arab nomads known as the janjaweed - a charge it denies.
Ebru TV