Ten American missionaries arrested in Haiti for trying to take 33 children out of the country after last month's earthquake were charged today with child kidnapping and criminal association. The group, most of whom are members of an Idaho-based church group, were sent back to jail today after a closed court hearing in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.Their lawyer, Edwin Coq, said that the judge had found sufficient evidence to file charges against his clients, who were arrested last Friday at Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic while trying to take the busload of children out of the country without documents or permission. He said that under Haiti's legal system, there will not be an open trial, but that a judge will consider the evidence. It could take the judge three months to render a verdict, he added.
Each of the kidnapping counts carries a possible sentence of five to 15 years in prison.
One of missionaries, Laura Silsby, told reporters as she entered the court: "We expect God's will be done. And we will be released."
The group, who were being held at the headquarters of Haiti's judicial police, deny they were engaged in child trafficking and said they were just trying to help some of the thousands of orphans left destitute and abandoned by the 12 January earthquake.They have been described as "kidnappers" by Haiti's prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, who said that they "knew what they were doing was wrong".
On Thursday, a mother in a remote village outside Haiti's main earthquake zone told reporters how she allowed her twin sons to be taken by the missionaries because they promised to provide a life of hope and opportunity for her children.Maggie Moise, who has eight children, said she was contacted by a local man who works in an orphanage in the village of Calebasse, an hour and a half's drive from the centre of Port-au-Prince, and was told that "some white people" wanted to help her family.
"They said they wanted to go with our children and told us 'don't worry, everything will be fine'," she said.
The Baptists said they had planned to take abandoned children orphaned in the earthquake and raise them at a new orphanage in the Dominican Republic. But according to locals, none of the children taken from Calebasse were orphans nor even particularly desperate. Few houses in the village have suffered any damage in the quake.
Justice Minister Paul Denis said they should be tried in Haiti despite the damage done to the country's judicial infrastructure and casualties among judges and court staff. There have been suggestions the 10 could be tried in the US.
"It is Haitian law that has been violated, it is up to the Haitian authorities to hear and judge the case."I don't see any reason why they should be tried in the United States."
The US ambassador to Haiti, Kenneth Merten, met the group at police headquarters after the hearing.
"We'd like to assure they get treated according to the law, the Haitian law, and that they get treated fairly," he said.
The children, who are from aged from two to 12, are now in the care of the Austrian-run SOS Children's Village in Port-au-Prince. The parents were promised that the children would be educated and cared for in the Dominican Republic. A number of parents in the damaged village said they would find it difficult to provide for their children if they came back.
Ms Silsby has said her group had met a Haitian pastor by chance when they arrived last week, and that he had helped them gather the children. She also admitted that they did not have the proper paperwork.
"Our intent was to help only those children that needed us most, that had lost either both their mother and father, or had lost one of their parents and the other had abandoned them," she said from her jail cell on Wednesday.
This case has become the biggest thing since the quake. It's pushed the tragedy - that has seen up to 200,000 killed and countless more made homeless - off the front page. The issues surrounding this story are important. Natural disasters in the past have seen cases of child trafficking. A warning by Unicef was responsible for the increased security by the Haitian authorities that led to the arrest. With the US spearheading the relief mission and with the American public donating so much to the survivors of the disaster, the expectation of many was that they'd be released; they'd turn up at court and a short time later they'd be whisked out of the country.
A Haiti judge has released eight of the 10 Americans missionaries being held since being accused of trying to illegally remove 33 children from the country following the January 12 earthquake.
