PARIS:  More than 4,000 French Muslims are taking legal action for fraud, theft and abuse of trust after making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in December, a pilgrims' association said Wednesday.

Of the 30,000 French Muslims who made the hajj, 11,500 said they felt cheated by organizers, with flights and hotels changed or cancelled at the last minute, visas turning out to be fake, and high fees paid to middlemen.

The SOS Pilgrims group representing more than 4,000 of them plans to file a joint lawsuit in Paris on Thursday to seek compensation, its head Zakaria Nana told AFP.

Of the estimated 100 French groups claiming to specialize in trips to the holy city in Saudi Arabia, only a dozen are considered trustworthy, according to Le Parisien newspaper.

"French pilgrims receive the worst treatment of all the pilgrims in Mecca, because criminal groups have been allowed to take over" the market, Nana said.

Performing the hajj is one of the five pillars or tenets of Islam. It must be undertaken at least once during a Muslim person's lifetime if they have the means to do so.

Each year both SOS Pilgrims and the French Council for the Muslim Religion (CFCM) report complaints about the pilgrimage from among France's community of five million Muslims. –AFP