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Comment by fireguy on February 8, 2010 at 4:52pm

Thanks for the updates and for keeping this topic active. We need to help anyway we can.

Comment by truth on February 8, 2010 at 2:31pm

Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) -- A Haitian attorney representing 10 Americans charged with kidnapping for trying to take 33 children out of Haiti told CNN Sunday he has resigned.

Edwin Coq said he had quit as a lawyer for the Americans. It wasn't immediately clear who would replace him.

"I know that they have been looking at other lawyers," said Phyllis Allison, mother of one of those detained, Jim Allen. "They don't know what to do."

The 10 missionaries, including group leader Laura Silsby, were charged Thursday with kidnapping children and criminal association. Coq had said that court hearings would be held Monday and Tuesday for his clients, who have been split up at two prisons.

He has tried to get the Americans released, though he has also blamed Silsby for the missionaries' legal troubles.

Conviction on the kidnapping charge would carry a maximum penalty of life in prison; the criminal association charge would carry a penalty of three to nine years, according to a former justice minister.

The Americans were turned back a week ago as they tried to take the children across the border into the Dominican Republic without proper documentation. They said they were going to house them in a converted hotel in that country and later move them to an orphanage they were building there.

The Americans have said they were just trying to help the children leave the earthquake-stricken country. A January 12 earthquake flattened Haiti's capital and killed more than 200,000 people.

"Except for Laura -- the group's leader, who took the responsibility to displace these 33 children, fully knowing she didn't have any legal document that would allow her to do so -- the other nine American citizens didn't know anything about what was going on and I remain convinced that they would not have given their accord," Coq told CNN.

Coq added that Silsby "said she had no intention to do any harm."

Some of the detained Americans have said they thought they were helping orphans, but their interpreters told CNN this week that they were present when group members spoke with some of the children's parents. Some parents in a village outside Port-au-Prince said they had willingly given their children to the Americans, who promised them a better life. The parents also said they were told they could see their children whenever they wanted.

The Dominican consul general has said he warned Silsby about trying to cross the border without proper documents.

Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN's "Larry King Live" Thursday that the judge in the case has three months to decide whether to prosecute. "We hope that he will decide long before those three months," he said. "He can release them, he can ask to prosecute them."

If a decision is made to prosecute, the case would be heard before a jury, he said.

Bellerive told CNN the Haitian government was open to the possibility of the case being transferred to a U.S. court, but he said the request would have to come from the United States. "Until now, I was not asked," he said.

Coq told CNN he had been hired by Eric Thompson, husband of Carla Thompson, one of the arrested missionaries, on behalf of the families.

Comment by fireguy on February 5, 2010 at 1:13am

I guess it's ok for Austrians to take care of these kids but not Idahoans.

Comment by truth on February 4, 2010 at 10:36pm

US missionaries charged in Haiti

Haiti has charged 10 US missionaries with child abduction and criminal conspiracy for allegedly trying to smuggle 33 children out of the country.

Haitian officials said their cases would now be sent to an investigating judge who would decide how to proceed.

If convicted they face lengthy jail terms, says the BBC's Paul Adams, in Haiti's quake-hit capital city.

When stopped on the border last Friday, they said they were taking the children to a Dominican Republic orphanage.

But it has emerged some of the youngsters had parents who were alive.

'Kidnappers'

After the hearing the 10 missionaries were taken back to the jail where they have been kept since Friday.
ANALYSIS
Paul Adams, BBC News, Port-au-Prince We are told that the investigation could last for at least three months.

Clearly in a country where child trafficking, child abduction and child prostitution are all problems that the authorities have grappled with unsuccessfully for a number of years, the authorities here feel that this is something that needs to be investigated properly.

A lot of international organisations are also saying that in the chaotic aftermath of a disaster of this kind it is simply unacceptable for anyone, no matter how well intentioned, to come into Haiti, scoop up needy children, even if their parents are destitute and willing to give them up, and take them outside the country.

The situation is simply too chaotic for that kind of approach

Amid chaotic scenes, the group was bundled into a van outside the court.

"I feel good," the group's leader Laura Silsby told reporters. "I trust in God."

The five men and five women, most of them from Idaho, were due to have a hearing earlier in the week, but that was postponed because of a lack of interpreters.

Haiti's Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive has labelled the Americans "kidnappers".

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," he told AFP news agency.

"I don't see any reason why they should be tried in the United States."

The US ambassador to Haiti, Kenneth Merten, met with 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.

A state department spokesman in Washington said the US was watching the case closely and would continue to offer assistance, through its consulate, to the group.

'Single village'

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.

Twenty-one of the children are from a single village outside the capital and were handed over willingly by their parents, says the BBC's Paul Adams, in Port-au-Prince.

Residents in the village of Callebas told an Associated Press news agency reporter they had handed their children over through a local orphanage worker who said he was acting on the Americans' behalf.

The worker is said to have promised the families that the missionaries would educate their children in neighbouring Dominican Republic.

A number of parents in the badly-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.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/8499401.stm

Comment by fireguy on February 4, 2010 at 5:38pm

I agree with you both on this travesty of "justice".

Comment by truth on February 3, 2010 at 5:16pm

Something is fishy with this story.