Related: Halting the Hijacking of Haitian Children
"Judge in Haiti ready to release US missionaries in kidnap case" by Frank Bajak, Associated Press | February 12, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - The 10 US missionaries charged with kidnapping after trying to take a busload of children out of Haiti should be released from jail while an investigation continues, a Haitian judge said yesterday, giving the Americans their best news since their arrests nearly two weeks ago....
It is unclear when the missionaries, most of whom are members of an Idaho Baptist church group, might be released, and Judge Bernard Saint-Vil said it was too early to say whether they would be able to leave this earthquake-crippled Caribbean nation if granted provisional freedom. It is also unclear what bearing releasing the missionaries might have on whether they go to trial.
Saint-Vil yesterday privately questioned the last of a group of parents who said they willingly gave their children to the Baptist missionaries, believing the Americans would educate and care for them.
“After listening to the families, I see the possibility that they can all be released,’’ Saint-Vil said. “I am recommending that all 10 Americans be released.’’
Saint-Vil said he delivered his recommendation to prosecutor Josephe Mannes Louis yesterday. Louis said he would respond with his own recommendation next week. Haitian government offices are closed today for a national day of mourning.
Even if they were open they are just piles of rubble.
The Americans were charged last week with child kidnapping and criminal association after being arrested Jan. 29 while trying to take 33 children, ages 2 to 12, across the border to an orphanage they were trying to set up in the Dominican Republic.
The following day, group leader Laura Silsby of Meridian, Idaho, said the children were obtained either from orphanages or from distant relatives. She said only children who were found not to have living parents or relatives who could care for them might be put up for adoption.
At least 20 of the children are from a single village and have living parents, however. Some of the parents said they willingly turned over their children to the missionaries because they could no longer feed or otherwise care for them. The homes of many of the children collapsed in the quake.
P.J. Crowley, US State Department spokesman, said yesterday that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had not personally intervened in the case, as the legal team of one of the missionaries, Jim Allen of Amarillo, Texas, requested in a letter Tuesday.
Crowley added that Washington was “satisfied with the overall conduct of this case.’’
Translation: You guys are on your own. U.S. doesn't want to open that can of worms.
The pastor of the Meridian, Idaho, church attended by several of the detainees said he had yet to receive official word on their release.
“Our confidence continues to remain, both in our faith and in our attorneys that represent our people,’’ said Pastor Clint Henry of Central Valley Baptist Church. “Now we wait and pray, believing that in the coming hours we will receive the news we have waited for.’’
On Wednesday, from behind cell bars in the stuffy, grimy jail where they have been held, the missionaries refused to be interviewed.
“We’ve said all we’re going to say for now,’’ Silsby said. “We don’t want to talk now.’’
The women were held separately from the men, who shared their cell with nine Haitian men, some of whom played checkers on the cell floor.
“We will not talk unless our lawyer is present,’’ said Paul Thompson, pastor of Eastside Baptist Church in Idaho....
Isn't that something guilty people say?
Or has the MSM attention turned them off (as it usually does) to their "friends" in the AmeriKan MSM?
