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.
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.
of course there is noway you can give those people the benefit of the doubt and just say they screwed up?? Instead just like every other thread you start concerning anything especially Obama you need to go for sensatioanlism instead of the truth...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.
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.
Nothing to see here folks. Just someone trying is use this as an example to slam organized (Christian) religion. Move along.
If they were handed over willingly by their parents, there's not much of an issue.
I don't think he is bashing Christians per say. Did you see his thread in OT about Haiti?
THis is exactly what is wrong with our country, and exactly why we are hated so much. It is never enough we just go in and try to do some good, and give aid and money, and medical relief. Some always have to attempt imposing their twisted moral beliefs onto other peoples. No people like you are whats wrong with this country! Jumping to conclusions that are bogus. This had nothing to do with imposing their will or religion on these children...sorry......what it had to do was a huge mistake in judgement all the while caring about these childrens lives. Nowhere does this have anything to do with imposing their moral beleiefs on these children. If they were Taoists and muslims or any other group of people you would probably say nothing. Yet because they are baptist you assume that all they care about is converting these children...
The do-gooders that wanted to "save" these children and kidnap them into their vision of moral America" should spend many long years locked up that Haiti jail. Just maybe that would deter other self-righteousness religious groups from following suit. For anyone, for any outside group to come in and tell the Haitian people we know what is best for your children, is grossly insulting. No you are insulting the intelliegence of the members here on ATOT with your slanyted dribble. Please oh please show me where anybody said that we know what right for the Haitian people....you can`t.....
Yet it`s been reported that quite a few maybe even 2/3rds of the parents willingly gave these people their children in hopes for a better life for these children....over looked that huh????
Just maybe if we gave our assistance and only our assistance (when needed and asked for), and left our moral superiority attitude at home, just maybe we could be trusted and respected. What this so called religious group tried to do is simply perverted and outrageous. I find your nonesense perverted and the fact that you are so over the deep end is very disturbing.....
They would love to have the freedom to do this very same thing at will, in our country right here in America. Now you are just blabbering to blab.....open mouth insert foot....I love it when people like you just keep blabbering on and on...hahaha
But our laws prevent them. So they just have to try pulling their bs in some foreign country, suffering and highly susceptible after a national tragedy. Again you aree trying to0 make it seem as if they went to Haiti with a plan to take haitian children against their will...when in reality these people made some errors and didn`t have the proper approval to move the children.
Guess the Haitians were not as gullible as expected. And the very laws being applied in Haiti are the very same laws we have in the good ole USA to protect our children from the same self appointed moral do-gooders. Why the press is so upset and obsessed about any injustice occurring in Haiti is dumbfounded, since we have the very same legal protections in our country against kidnappers, whomever they may call themselves. keep talking and showing your ignorance....
Yeah once I saw: "were handed over willingly by their parents" I yawned.
There's going to be hell to pay once Madonna learns her order has been misplaced...
There are plenty of kids that are "handed over willingly by their parents" into the sex trade. It is called being sold.
I don't think anyone on here knows the whole facts of this story. Something funny is going on here somewhere. I am not about to go pointing fingers at who did what.
On both sides it seems like a lot of people hoping to make news and publicity for their different special interests.
I don't think you can equate it to the sex trade or being sold. It appears these are desperate parents who simply can't provide for the children, so they are willing to give them up to someone else who they hope can provide them a life (education, clothing etc). If something comes up about these folks being pedo's or something like that, then by all means, hang them from the gallows, but from my perspective it looks like they were trying to save these kids but just didn't go about it through the proper channels.
human trafficking is extremely illegal everywhere. It is a huge problem. Who is to say they weren't working under the cover of missionary to sell them into sex slavery.