(Adds details from state lawyer, French prime minister)

By Stephanie Hancock

N'DJAMENA, Nov 3 (Reuters) - A magistrate in Chad began questioning on Saturday a group of 16 Europeans facing abduction and fraud charges for attempting to fly 103 children out of the central African country.

A heavy military escort brought four members of the Spanish air crew, still in their uniforms, and three French journalists to the main law courts in the dusty capital, N'Djamena, to be questioned by the examining magistrate.

"At the moment it is intense cross-examination," Chadian state lawyer Philippe Houssine told reporters.

Once all the accused have been questioned, a tribunal will compare their statements before the magistrate decides whether there is sufficient evidence for a trial, a process likely to take several days.

Nine French and seven Spanish nationals were arrested in the eastern town of Abeche, near the border with Sudan's war-torn Darfur region, just over a week ago as they tried to fly the children, aged between one and 10 years, to Europe.

Six of the French are members of a group called Zoe's Ark which has said that it intended to place orphans from Darfur with European families for foster care and that it had the right to do so under international law.

But U.N. and Chadian officials say most of the infants had come from families with at least one parent living on the violent Chad-Sudan border, contradicting the "war orphans" description of the children given by Zoe's Ark.

"An act like this is inhumane. We can't accept this. We must try them here," said Firmin Sanda, one of a crowd of local residents gathered outside the court buildings.

Eric Breteau, the head of Zoe's Ark, and at least two Chadian co-accused were also brought to the courts on Saturday. If convicted in Chad, the main accused face possible forced labour terms of five to 20 years.

"FOOLED"

The affair is an embarrassment for former colonial ruler France, which is an ally of Chad's President Idriss Deby and has troops and aircraft stationed in the landlocked country.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon asked Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and Defence Minister Herve Morin on Saturday to launch investigations into the case.

He said that as long ago as May the government had publicly warned French families involved, some of whom paid up to 2,000 euros ($2,900) as a "donation" towards the cost of fostering Darfur orphans evacuated by Zoe's Ark, to be cautious.

The case has sparked a fierce moral debate between those who believe the children would be better off in Europe, far from Africa's suffering and conflicts, and those outraged at the way they were taken from their African families.

Some of the children told journalists in Chad they were lured from villages on the Chad-Sudan border with offers of sweets or schooling.

Around 100 people, some carrying flowers, took part in a silent march in support of the Europeans in the southern French town of Marseille. Another march is planned in Paris on Sunday.

Protests against Zoe's Ark have taken place in Sudan and Chad, some directly criticising France.

The niece of Dominique Aubry, one of the French nationals arrested in Chad, told a French newspaper that her uncle had been misled about the nature of the group's activities.

"There are the organisers of the operation and then there are the others who, like my uncle, were fooled," Anne-Sophie Lagniel was quoted as saying by Le Figaro on Saturday.

"They made them believe that this would be a well-organised, official mission, patronised by Cecilia Sarkozy ... They told him it was about organising a camp in Chad to treat children there. Nothing else. There was never talk about adoption." (Additional reporting by Stephanie Hancock, Clotaire Achi and Alain Amontchi in N'Djamena, Kerstin Gehmlich in Paris and Marine Hass in Brussels)

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