American Aid Workers Make Bail in Zimbabwe

NAIROBI, Kenya, Sept. 13, 2010 -- Four U.S. aid workers in Zimbabwe charged with improperly treating patients have been freed on bail, pending a trial scheduled for later this month.

A judge in a Harare court ordered the four Americans, along with one New Zealander and one Zimbabwean working at an AIDS orphanage, to pay $200 each in bail and relinquish their passports. The aid workers are also required to live at the Mother of Peace orphanage, where they work, until trial.

If convicted, they could be fined and deported.Gloria Cox Crowell, 48, Dr. Anthony Eugene Jones, 39, Gregory Renard Miller, 64, and David Greenburg, 62, of the Oakland, Calif.-based Christian charity Allen Temple AIDS Ministry were charged with treating AIDS patients and distributing drugs without the proper medical license.

The four were arrested Thursday and spent the weekend in Zimbabwean police custody before going before a court today, according to the U.S. Embassy. They have denied the charges and pleaded not guilty.

The charges were relatively minor and the workers "will definitely not be going to jail," defense attorney Jonathan Samukange told ABC News.

Although the maximum penalty for the offense is a fine, Samukange said, he intends to prove that his clients are innocent.

A member of the church's AIDS ministry believes soured relations with a local Zimbabwean organization are behind the arrests, according to a New York Times report.

Samukange could not comment on why the men and women were detained but said, "At the trial, those kinds of things are going to come out."

The Allen Temple AIDS Ministry has been working in Zimbabwe for a decade and members of the church told reporters this is the first time licensing problems have arisen.

The workers are volunteers, with members paying their own way from California to the African nation three or four times a year. Most of them have some kind of medical background. The team that was arrested consisted of one doctor, two nurses and a community volunteer.

Samukange said the medical team came with a four-month supply of anti-retroviral drugs and that it has treated more than 3,000 patients in the past week alone in the two clinics where they work, as well as the orphanage.