By Stephanie Hancock N'DJAMENA, Nov 7 (Reuters) - The French humanitarian activists accused by Chad of abducting children were seeking to save them from suffering and death, and had received material assistance from U.N. agencies, their lawyers said on Wednesday. Six French members of the Zoe's Ark group are facing trial in Chad on charges of abduction and fraud after they were stopped last month from flying 103 African children to Europe aboard a chartered Spanish passenger jet. Three Spanish air crew and a Belgian pilot are also charged as accomplices in the case which has strained ties between France and its former colony and focused a spotlight on the work of humanitarian groups operating in violence-torn east Chad. French lawyers Gilbert Collard and Mario Stasi, who are acting for the accused Zoe's Ark members, told reporters in Chad their clients felt the charges against them completely misrepresented what they were doing. "They really hope to be able to explain themselves, to show that the charges are not real ... that they were acting with a humanitarian objective," Collard said in the Chadian capital N'Djamena, where the accused have been formally questioned. Chad's authorities have said the Zoe's Ark group, which operated under the name Children Rescue in the country, was trying to fly the children out without authorisation. Film footage taken by French journalists who covered the Zoe's Ark members working in eastern Chad show they sought to conceal their plans, and that they put fake bandages, marked with fake blood, on the infants to pretend they were injured. At the same time, the group told European families it wanted to place orphans from Sudan's Darfur region for foster care. But United Nations officials said inquiries had shown most of the 21 girls and 82 boys aged 1-10 years which the group had in its charge were not orphans, were in basically good health and came from villages on the Chad-Sudan border. "Maybe they were acting outside of classical methods, but their sole goal was to save children from horror and death -- they remain convinced that was the objective," Collard said. Stasi said the group received material assistance from other aid organisations in eastern Chad like the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR and the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, among others. "IN GOOD FAITH" "We need (these organisations) to explain why they supplied milk, why they helped with transport, why they provided food and tents and contributed to the operation," he said. The head of UNHCR in Chad, Serge Male, said his agency had given "materials" to the Children Rescue group, which was the name Zoe's Ark was using to operate in the African country. "In good faith, we gave them a hand ... because the purpose of their mission, as they explained it to us, was to help children in need," he told Reuters by phone. Male said UNHCR would never have considered helping the group had it known they planned to fly the children out of Chad. UNICEF said a new member of staff in eastern Chad had "in good faith, on her own initiative" given milk and armbands to gauge malnutrition, worth $130 in total, to Children Rescue. "Bearing in mind a severely malnourished child's health can seriously deteriorate in 48 hours, the staff member's priority was above all to save lives," UNICEF said in a statement. Stasi was asked how the detained French humanitarian activists reacted to the TV footage released by the French news agency CAPA, whose reporter Marc Garmirian was originally arrested along with them in east Chad last month. The footage reveals the group lied about their plans to fly children to Europe and shows them putting bandages on the infants to make them seem as though they were injured. "Don't talk to me about what CAPA has done, it's a kick in the teeth," Stasi said. Garmirian was one of three French journalists who along with four Spanish air hostesses was released by the Chadian authorities to French President Nicolas Sarkozy when he flew to N'Djamena at the weekend in a mission to take them home. (Writing by Pascal Fletcher, editing by Mary Gabriel)
