BOBIGNY, France, Feb 2 A French court sentenced today 10 Bulgarians to up to six years in

BOBIGNY, France, Feb 2 (Reuters) A French court sentenced today 10 Bulgarians to up to six years in prison for having sold babies to French Gypsy families.

The Roma families admitted to buying 23 babies for between 2,500 and 8,000 euros ($3,255-$10,420), saying they had acted because they could not have children of their own or because they thought the children would have a better life in France.

''We had to take into account the wish for a child that was hard to achieve and at the same time, the fact that there cannot be trade in human beings,'' the president of the court said.

The court north of Paris sentenced most of the 41 French recipients of the babies to symbolic suspended prison sentences of six months. Frenchman Henri Salva, 72, who brought the buyers into contact with the sellers, received a five year jail term.

The court sentenced the 10 Bulgarians, most of them members of the same Roma Gypsy family, to prison sentences ranging from two to six years for ''trade in human beings''. It reissued international arrest warrants for seven who are at large.

They were accused of bringing pregnant women -- many of them prostitutes -- to France by bus.

The women then gave birth under the name of the ''buying'' mothers and were sent back to Bulgaria with a few hundred euros.

'' ... these children started their life as things,'' said prosecutor Samuel Gillis, referring to acts which mainly took place in 2004 and 2005.

''A child is not a consumer good,'' he told the court.

The French families told the court they participated in the trade because they wanted to give the babies a better future.

''The child is better off here in France,'' Andre Scheck had told the court, admitting he had paid Bulgarian middle-men 2,500 euros in 2004 to buy a child.

The Bulgarian mothers have not claimed their children back.

Except from two babies, who have been taken in charge by French social services, all children stayed with their French families and lived in good conditions, according to justice reports.

REUTERS PDM KP2256