Three More Months: Americans in Haiti Wait

Feb. 5, 2010— -- The Idaho Baptists being held in Haiti could wait as long as three months to hear their fate after they were charged with child kidnapping and criminal conspiracy Thursday, according to a lawyer representing the group.

The 10 missionaries went to court Thursday with hopes of being released. Their bags were packed, and their lawyer in the Dominican Republic optimistically had chartered them a plane.

"We expect that God's will will be done and we will be released," the group's leader, Laura Silsby, said on her way into court. "And we are looking to what God is going to do."

But after hearing the child kidnapping and conspiracy charges, a lawyer representing the missionaries laid the blame on Silsby, not the other nine Americans, saying she should have known she could not remove the children without documentation, according to The Associated Press.

"I'm going to do everything I can to get the nine out. They were naive. They had no idea what was going on and they did not know that they needed official papers to cross the border. But Silsby did," Edwin Coq told reporters after the hearing.

Carlos Castillo, a Dominican Republic consul general, said he warned the group about what could happen if they did not have the necessary paperwork.

"Don't try to cross the border without the proper permits because you're going to be accused of the intent of child trafficking … I was really clear to her," Castillo said.

Each count of child kidnapping could bring 15 years and nine years for each count of criminal association.

Family members of the Americans released a statement Thursday evening expressing worry over the missionaries.

"Obviously, we do not know details about what happened and didn't happen on this mission," the statement read. "However, we are absolutely convinced that those who were recruited to join this mission traveled to Haiti to help, not hurt, these children. We are pleading to the Haitian prime minister to focus his energies on the critical tasks ahead for the country and to forgive mistakes that were made by a group of Americans trying to assist Haiti's children."

Attention on Americans Detracting From Focus on Haiti

This week Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive called the case against the Americans a "distraction" because he said it had consumed more attention than the suffering of 1.5 million Haitians following the devastating earthquake last month.

Haitians camped on the courthouse grounds, people made homeless because of the quake, echoed the same sentiment.

"These people are American," said one Haitian man. "The whole world just wants to know what will happen to the Americans."

International Precedent

This case does have international precedent. In 2007, missionaries from Zoe's Ark, a French group, were convicted of attempting to smuggle 103 children out of war torn Darfur aboard a chartered plane.

The missionaries were sentenced to eight years of hard labor and fined $9 million, but the president of Chad later pardoned them.

His country relies on the generosity of France, much as Haiti relies on aid from the United States following the earthquake. Not only is the U.S. government spending millions of dollars and devoting hundreds of personnel to the Haiti relief effort, Christian groups are also an important part of the ongoing support structure in the country. Haiti cannot afford to alienate them.

Last night the U.S. ambassador to Haiti, Kenneth Merten, said talks with the Haitian government about the case were ongoing. But the ambassador did not visit the prisoners.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the case a "matter for the Haitian judicial system."

"We're going to continue to provide support as we do in every instance like this to American citizens who have been charged, and hope that this matter can be resolved in an expeditious way," Clinton said this morning. "But it is something that a sovereign nation is pursuing based on the evidence that is presented when the charges were announced."

The Associated Press and ABC News' Kirit Radia and Hanna Seigel contributed to this report.

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