PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – A Haitian attorney says eight of 10 U.S. missionaries charged with child kidnapping will be released.
Members of the Idaho-based charity, New Life Children’s Refuge sit at a police station in Port-au-Prince in January 2010. A Haitian judge has freed eight of the 10 Americans held in the quake-battered country on child kidnapping charges, saying they can leave the country Wednesday, their lawyer said.
(AFP/File/Fred Dufour)
Aviol Fleurant says group leader Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter will be held for additional questioning. Fleurant represents nine of the 10 members of the Idaho-based church group.
He says the rest of the group are free to leave Wednesday but have not arranged transportation.
Judge Bernard Saint-Vil said earlier in the day that some of the group members would be free to go home Wednesday. But he said he was waiting for the prosecutor’s opinion before announcing who would be freed.
The group was caught trying to take 33 children out of the quake-stricken country late last month
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) -- A Haitian judge said on Thursday he had ruled in favor of the release of 10 U.S. missionaries accused of kidnapping 33 children and trying to take them out of the earthquake-stricken country.
“I just signed the request for the release of the 10 Americans submitted by the lawyers and I have sent it to the prosecutor’s office,” Judge Bernard Sainvil said.
Under Haitian law, the prosecutor can formally comment on the judge’s decision but he cannot overrule it.
Sainvil earlier told Reuters that once the prosecutor had given his opinion, he could formally issue a release order.
“They can go directly to the airport if they want and leave, but they should provide a guarantee of representation if further questions need to be asked,” he said.
The missionaries, most of whom belong to an Idaho-based Baptist church, have been in jail since they were stopped at Haiti’s border with the Dominican Republic on January 29.
They were arrested trying to take the 33 children across the border to the Dominican Republic 17 days after a magnitude 7 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 people in the impoverished Caribbean nation.
The five men and five women have denied any intentional wrongdoing and said they were only trying to help orphans left destitute by the quake, which shattered the Haitian capital and left more than 1 million homeless. But evidence has come to light showing most of the children still had living parents.
The prominent role of military, civilians creates high expectations
PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI – International relief organizations backed by American soldiers delivered hundreds of tons of rice to homeless residents of the Haitian capital Sunday, laboring to ease a food shortage that has left countless thousands struggling to find enough to eat.
But even as food-aid workers enjoyed their most successful day since the Jan. 12 earthquake, the increasingly prominent role of U.S. troops and civilians in the capital is creating high expectations that the Obama administration is struggling to contain.
The needs are extraordinary, and the common refrain is that the Americans will provide.
“I want the Americans to take over the country. The Haitian government can’t do anything for us,” said Jean-Louis Geffrard, a laborer who lives under a tarp in the crowded square. “When we tell the government we’re hungry, the government says, ‘We’re hungry, too.’ ”
Added Canga Matthieu, a medical student whose school was destroyed: “The American government should take care of us.”
“They’re well organized. The United States is the richest country in the world, and they can help.”
But help has its limits, U.S. officials emphasize in their public statements and in their interactions with Haitians. “You will have a friend and partner in the United States of America today and going forward,” President Obama said the day after the earthquake. But U.S. officials here make it clear that the American government is not responsible for rebuilding the ravaged country.
“The military forces . . . are not here to do any reconstruction. That is not our mission,” said Col. Rick Kaiser, a U.S. Army engineer overseeing emergency repairs to the Port-au-Prince docks, the electrical and water systems, and other battered infrastructure in the hemisphere’s poorest country. (Click here for full story)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – French rescuers pulled a teenage girl — very dehydrated, with a broken left leg and moments from death — from the rubble of a home near the destroyed St. Gerard University on Wednesday, a stunning recovery 15 days after an earthquake devastated the city.
Darlene Etienne was rushed to a French military field hospital and then to the French military hospital ship Sirroco, groaning through an oxygen mask with her eyes open in a lost stare.
Darlene Etienne, 17, rests in a French military field hospital after being rescued from a building in Port-au-Prince, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010. French rescuers pulled the teenage girl out of the rubble 15 days after an earthquake hit the Caribbean capital. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
“She’s alive!” said paramedic Paul Francois-Valette, who accompanied her into the hospital.
Authorities say it is rare for anyone to survive more than 72 hours without water, little alone more than two weeks. But Etienne may have had some access to water from a bathroom of the collapsed home, and rescuers said she mumbled something about having a little Coca-Cola with her in the rubble.
Her family said Etienne, 17, had just started studying when the disaster struck, trapping dozens of students and staff in the rubble of school buildings, hostels and nearby homes.
“We thought she was dead,” her cousin, Jocelyn A. St. Jules, said in a telephone call with The Associated Press.
Then — half a month after the earthquake — neighbors on Wednesday heard a voice weakly calling from the rubble of a private home down the road from the collapsed university. They called authorities, who brought in the French civil response team.
Rescuer Claude Fuilla then walked along the dangerously crumbled roof, heard her voice and saw a little bit of dust-covered black hair in the rubble. Clearing away some debris, he managed to reach the young woman and see she was alive — barely.
“She couldn’t really talk to us or say how long she’d been there but I think she’d been there since the earthquake. I don’t think she could have survived even a few more hours,” Fuilla said.
Digging out a hole big enough to give her oxygen and water, they found she had a very weak pulse. Within 45 minutes they managed to remove her, covered in dust. Fuilla said she was rescued from what appeared to be the porch area of the house, but a neighbor said he believed it was the shower room, where she might have had access to water.
“It’s exceptional. She spoke to us in a very little voice, she was extremely weak,” Fuilla said. “Before we stabilized her she was extremely dehydrated and weak she had a very low blood pressure.”
Another rescuer, French Lt. Col. Christophe Renou, said he had no idea how she had managed to cling to life for so long: “Definitely she’s been here for 15 days. She wasn’t hurt but she was very, very weak.”
Renou said his team would probably return Thursday with radar equipment to look for any other possible survivors.
French Ambassador Didier le Bret praised the persistence of the French rescue team, which has kept looking for survivors for days after the Haitian government officially called off the search.
“They are so stubborn because they should not have been working anymore because, officially, the rescue phase is over. But they felt that some lives still are to be saved, so we did not say that they should leave the country,” he told Associated Press Television News.
“To be honest we thought that the last miracle we had a couple of days ago … would be the last miracle because the chances are so very, very slight. But it seems that beyond the miracle, there was another miracle.”
The last previous confirmed rescue of someone trapped by the initial quake occurred Saturday, 11 days later, when French rescuers extricated a man from the ruins of a hotel grocery store. A man pulled Tuesday from the rubble of a downtown store later and treated by the U.S. military for severe dehydration and a broken leg said he had been trapped during an aftershock.
At least 135 people have been unearthed by rescue teams since the Jan. 12 quake, and many more by relatives and neighbors. But most of these rescues were in the immediate aftermath and authorities say it is rare for anyone to survive more than 72 hours without water
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – A Haitian attorney says eight of 10 U.S. missionaries charged with child kidnapping will be released.
