A French couple yesterday appealed their extradition to France, where they are wanted to serve time for extortion, illegal arrest and violence against members of a sect led by the man.

Alain Schmitt, 49, still has four years and 10 months left to serve of a jail term and his 47-year-old fiancée, Laurence Liegeois, has 15 months.

Their extradition was ordered by the Magistrates' Court earlier this week after a European Arrest Warrant was issued last month.

According to the warrant, Mr Schmitt is the leader of a "sectarian group" under the cover of an association named Minh.

Addressing a press conference outside the law courts yesterday, the couple's lawyer, Emmy Bezzina, said he could not understand the reasoning behind the magistrate's decision to extradite the couple when the court knew that Mr Schmitt had been found guilty in France without him even being present in the French court.

The lawyer said he was planning to file two constitutional cases next week because of "a number of issues in the extradition proceedings".

Dr Bezzina said his clients had never been convicted of torture, as was being alleged, adding that the charge had not even been mentioned in the European Arrest Warrant.

"They are not fugitives from justice but fugitives from injustice," Dr Bezzina said.

He said that if his client, a diabetic, was sent back to France he would face sure death in the French prisons because of their disastrous state.

The lawyer insisted that Minh, the group led by Mr Schmitt, was not a sect but a gathering of friends with a passion for martial arts who lived together as a community.

Minh was a martial arts character taken from a book written by Mr Schmitt himself, the lawyer said.

Members of the group, which number 20 in France and six in Malta, said that France had enacted a law to dissolve any group or non-governmental organisation the state believed was a sect.

They criticised France for this law on the basis of discrimination. It was now trying to enact a new law prohibiting the use of bandannas and the growing of long beards because these could be considered to be religious signs, they said.

Mr Schmitt's eldest son, Mattieu, who came to Malta to support his father, said that in 2005 he was taken to court on charges similar to those brought against his father and, "on no proof whatsoever", was jailed for 15 months. He filed an appeal which was pending before the highest court in France.

Between January last year and last January, there were seven similar cases in France, he said.

On Mr Schmitt's medical condition, Dr Bezzina said his client was 98 per cent blind and suffered from a 95 per cent disability.

Two weeks ago, the couple sought permission to marry in Malta but the court said it had no competence to decide the issue.

Asked why Mr Schmitt and his girlfriend wanted to get married in Malta and why they were in such a hurry to do so, Dr Bezzina said it was only in December that Mr Schmitt found out that his divorce had gone through. The couple had been planning to get married after the festive season.

A civil ceremony will be held and the couple are waiting for some certificates from the French Embassy in Malta.

The couple had also been planning a religious ceremony but the Curia said it could not allow the divorced couple to get married in any church or chapel because they did not satisfy the requirements laid down by Canon law.