PARIS: Two French pilots sentenced to 20 years in jail in the Dominican Republic for cocaine trafficking have managed to get out of the country and return home, their lawyer said in Paris on Monday.

Pascal Fauret, 55, and co-pilot Bruno Odos, whose age was not given, were among four Frenchmen handed 20-year terms in Santo Domingo in August in a case dubbed “Air Cocaine” in France.

But on Tuesday, they were back with their families in France, after slipping out of the Caribbean nation and travelling to the Franco-Dutch island of Saint Martin by boat before flying on to Martinique and then on to France, a source told AFP.

“They are in France not to flee justice but to seek justice,” their lawyer Jean Reinhart told AFP.

Exactly how they managed to leave the Dominican Republic remains shrouded in mystery.