PARIS, Nov 15 (Reuters) - French humanitarian activists charged with abducting children from Chad have told a judge there they may have been misled over the children's nationality by village chiefs and denied deliberately breaking the law.

French daily Le Monde said the leader of the group called "Zoe's Ark", Eric Breteau, and his partner Emilie Lelouch told the Chadian judge investigating the case they believed they had been rescuing orphans from a war zone.

The pair and four other French nationals face possible sentences of five to 20 years of forced labour in Chad if found guilty of trying to fly 103 African children aged 1-10 to Europe without authorisation.

"This humanitarian operation is legal in terms of international law," Le Monde quoted Breteau on Thursday as saying in testimony on Nov. 3. "It was not my intention to leave secretly, because you cannot secretly make a plane take off."

"We are convinced that these children had lost both their mothers and their fathers. If they were not Sudanese, perhaps we were given bad information or there were misunderstandings."

Village leaders had brought them the children and told them they were from Sudan, he said.

Zoe's Ark has said it planned to place orphans from Sudan's war-torn Darfur region with families in Europe for fostering but U.N. officials say most of the children had at least one person they considered to be a parent.

Some local families said Zoe's Ark members persuaded them to hand over their children for education in towns in eastern Chad, but they had never mentioned flying them to Europe.

According to Le Monde, Lelouch gave a similar version of events to Breteau's, telling investigators on Nov. 5: "If we were misled ... nobody in the organisation knew. We always acted in good faith."

The case has strained relations between France and its former colony, where the European Union plans to deploy a predominantly French peacekeeping force soon to protect civilians in the volatile east.

Several angry protests have taken place in Chad since the Zoe's Ark case erupted last month, fuelled by the release of 11 other Europeans, including flight crew and journalists, initially detained with the Zoe's Ark members.

Paris wants N'Djamena to invoke a judicial cooperation accord with France to allow the six to stand trial in their home country. But President Idriss Deby has insisted the remaining six detainees will be tried in Chad. (Reporting by Jon Boyle; editing by Francois Murphy and Michael Winfrey)

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