"Haiti quake figure pleads not guilty in Vt.; Fugitive charged with smuggling illegal immigrants" by John Curran, Associated Press | September 18, 2010
BURLINGTON, Vt. — Extradited from the Dominican Republic, wanted in Pennsylvania, and indicted in Vermont for allegedly smuggling illegal immigrants, a former adviser to US missionaries who were accused of taking children out of Haiti was ordered held without bail yesterday.
Related: Idaho Church Cover For Israeli Organ Trafficking in Haiti
Jorge Torres, 32, pleaded not guilty in his first court appearance since being returned to face charges that he smuggled immigrants from Canada into the United States in 2002. If convicted, he could get 25 years.
Torres — whose aliases include Jorge Puello, Jorge Torres-Puello, and George Simard — made news this year after the Haiti earthquake, acting as a lawyer and spokesman for 10 Baptists from Idaho who were detained in Haiti on child kidnapping charges and later released.
But he became the target of an international manhunt after being identified as a man wanted in the United States and in El Salvador, where he allegedly led a prostitution ring.
Torres, who was born in Yonkers, N.Y., and has dual citizenship in the US and Dominican Republic, wasn’t charged in connection with his dealings with the missionaries.
The Vermont case dates to 2002, when he allegedly organized illegal border crossings in which undocumented Costa Ricans and other Central and South American immigrants were driven across the US-Canada border at unguarded rural locations.
He’s been a fugitive for most of the past 10 years, according to Assistant US Attorney William Darrow, who told US District Judge William K. Sessions III that Torres disappeared after being put on supervised release following a federal bank fraud conviction in Pennsylvania.
WTF?
He moved to Canada and took the name George Simard before being indicted in Vermont in 2003, authorities allege.
Hoping to try him, the United States started proceedings to extradite him from Canada, but he fled again, and his whereabouts were unknown until he surfaced in Haiti, according to Darrow, who said Torres would be a flight risk if freed on bail.
Wearing blue jeans, a golf shirt, and a yarmulke, Torres objected when the judge said he would give Torres’s court-appointed lawyer 90 days to obtain the government’s evidence against him.
That explains the special treatment and lame-ass media and government excuses as to why this guy was free to gallivant around the hemisphere.
“The government has had eight years to give discovery,’’ he said. “I prepared for eight years. I’m ready to go [to trial] tomorrow,’’ Torres said.
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Btw, how are things in Haiti these days?
Related: One-Day Wonder: Haitian Hell Hole
I guess that is never why we read much about then anymore.