US missionaries in Haiti charged with child abduction
Thursday 4th February, 2010
Source: BBC
 

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.
 

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.