Judge releases eight of 10 Americans accused of kidnapping Haitian children

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti
— Eight of the 10 Americans jailed by Haitian authorities in late
January on suspicion of kidnapping 33 children and trying to take them
out of the earthquake-ravaged country were set free by a judge
Wednesday.

“The judge has taken his decision and he has ordered
the release of eight,” said Aviol Fleurant, who identified himself as
an attorney for the group. “The world must know that all 10 are
innocent!”

Fleurant said the investigating judge, Bernard Saint– Vil, decided to keep Laura Silsby, the leader of the group, and Charisa Coulter for further questioning about their reported efforts to establish an
orphanage for Haitian children. The lawyer said he expected the judge
to release the pair “in a few days.”

The eight who were freed, all looking generally healthy, were escorted from jail to a van by three U.S. Embassy officials. The van soon pulled into a secured area on the grounds of the city’s airport, where a field hospital run by the University of Miami is located.

The release followed the judge’s decision that there
was not enough incriminating evidence to justify putting the eight on
trial, marking a reversal of fortune for the group. The same judge two
weeks ago charged all 10 Americans with child kidnapping and criminal
association, raising the prospect of a trial and long prison sentences.

The suspects were arrested Jan. 29 when authorities stopped a bus carrying the children, five men and five women as they tried to cross into the Dominican Republic from Haiti.

Their arrests came amid the chaos and emergency response to the magnitude 7.0 earthquake Jan. 12 that killed an estimated 200,000 people in the Caribbean island nation and caused widespread homelessness and destruction.

At the time, group members said the children, from 2
to 12 years old, were orphans and that the group intended to provide
them with shelter and care. However, the group could not provide
documents proving legal custody of the children, many of whom later
were found not to be orphans.

The case became instant fodder for the hordes of
journalists who had descended on the nation. The Americans, their
intentions unclear, were portrayed alternately as would-be child
traffickers looking to profit from the children or religious do-gooders
lacking in common sense.

Silsby persuaded her church, Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, to help raise funds for the trip and send some of its members as missionaries. She secured a motel in the Dominican Republic, where she allegedly planned to house the Haitian children temporarily while permanent housing was built.

Congregants at the church have strongly disputed the
claims by some Haitians that the group was acting maliciously, and have
been lobbying U.S. officials to work more aggressively to win the
group’s release.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the Americans’ fate rested with the Haitian justice system. Paul Denis, Haitian minister of justice, echoed Clinton on Feb. 11, saying the foreigners “would be judged like everyone else.”

The case turned a harsh light on the staggering poverty and desperation that have long existed in Haiti and become even more severe since the earthquake.

In interviews with reporters, several of the parents
of the children from the heavily damaged village of Calebasse have said
that they willfully handed the youngsters over to the Americans after
being told they would be educated and well cared for, basics the
parents said they could not provide.

The children are now at a child-care center in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

—

(c) 2010, Los Angeles Times.

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