Jailed Baptists see Haitian judge
Five of the 10 American Baptist missionaries accused of illegally trying to take children out of earthquake-shattered Haiti left their jail cells temporarily to plead their case to a judge on Tuesday, the Associated Press reports.
The missionaries were arrested on Friday trying to cross into the Dominican Republic from Haiti with a busload of 33 children they said were orphaned by the January 12 quake. They denied charges they were engaged in child trafficking, insisting they were trying to help vulnerable orphans.
Haitian police have said some of the children have living parents.
The case could be diplomatically sensitive at a time when the United States is spearheading a huge relief effort to help hundreds of thousands of Haitian quake victims, and as U.S. aid groups pour millions of dollars of donations into Haiti.
The five missionaries were questioned behind closed doors at Haiti's judicial police headquarters in Port-au-Prince, where they are being held behind bars.
They were escorted from their cells by uniformed Haitian National Police officers to a separate room where the judge awaited along with a clerk and a translator.
"I heard five of them. Then I will hear the other five tomorrow," Judge Ezaie Pierre-Louis said. "After the hearing tomorrow, I will make a report to the prosecutor, then he will decide what he does next."
Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Lassegue said the missionaries did not have lawyers present.
Comments
There has been so much focus on this incident which was basically a misunderstanding. Yet very little interest has been shown for the Christian Missionaries who made the ultimate sacrifice in serving the Haitian people.
On January 12 a 7.0 Richter scale earthquake struck the impoverished Caribbean nation of Haiti, bringing widespread death and destruction to the western hemisphere’s poorest nation. The earthquake killed at least 200,000 people, injured at least 300,000 others, leveled at least 250,000 residencies, and destroyed or severely damaged at least 30,000 commercial structures. It was Haiti’s largest and most destructive earthquake in more than 200 years.
Beyond the statistics, the human suffering is amongst the most heartbreaking the world has seen in some time – the break-up of families, the orphaned children, the lack of food and water, the emotional and physical pain, the fight for daily survival.
This tragedy, however, has born witness to the generosity of Americans once again and others throughout the world who have given of themselves financially – donating roughly $528 million as of late January. But long before the earthquake put Haiti on the world radar screen, it stood out for its dismal standard of living. For generations Christian missionaries have come to do what they could. They were there on January 12 before the bottom fell out. A few of them even made the ultimate sacrifice. We wanted to honor these individuals here and welcome your additions and suggestions if we have missed anyone.
Jeffrey J. Rodman, President and CEO of Here-4-You Christian Grant Consulting is featuring the stories of devotion and achievement which inspire all of us on the Christian Grant Writing company’s website at https://npfunds.com/blog/?p=380.
Posted by: Jeffrey Rodman | February 16, 2010 9:46 AM