10 AMERICANS DETAIN IN HAITI AWAIT
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—The 10 U.S. citizens detained in Haiti after allegedly trying to whisk more than 30 children out of the country could be charged with kidnapping and child trafficking, Haiti police and judicial officials said Sunday.
The Americans and the missionary group sponsoring them have denied wrongdoing.
Aides to Renel Costumé, head of Haiti’s special police brigade for the protection of underage minors, said a preliminary investigation showed the U.S. group, composed of five women and five men, had fulfilled none of the administrative procedures necessary for adoption or health-related evacuation of the children, who ranged in age from two months to 12 years.
“They had absolutely no document,” said another Haitian law-enforcement official.
The Americans were arrested as they tried to cross the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Haitian officials said. As of Sunday, the group was held at Haiti’s police headquarters, which the government has been using since the Jan. 12 earthquake. U.S. diplomats have visited the detained Americans and are in communication with Haitian authorities, according to the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince.
The detained Americans were part of a nonprofit Christian ministry called the New Life Children’s Refuge that was attempting to move as many as 100 Haitian orphans to a new orphanage it was establishing in the Dominican Republic.
“Our team was falsely arrested,” said a statement for New Life released on the Web site of Meridian, Idaho’s Central Valley Baptist Church, where most of the detainees worshiped.
Drew Ham, a pastor at the church, said, “From what we understood, they had all the paperwork they thought they needed. But they got to the border and they did not have one of the pieces of paper they apparently needed, and next thing they knew they were being arrested.”
