The Haitian lawyer for 10 US Baptists charged with child kidnapping tried to bribe the missionaries’ way out of jail and has been fired, the attorney who hired him said on Saturday night.
The Haitian lawyer, Edwin Coq, denied the allegation. He said the US$60,000 he requested from the Americans’ families was his fee.
Jorge Puello, the attorney in the neighboring Dominican Republic retained by relatives of the 10 American missionaries after their arrest last week, told reporters that he fired Coq on Friday night. He had hired Coq to represent the detainees at Haitian legal proceedings.
Coq orchestrated “some kind of extortion with government officials” that would have led to the release of nine of the 10 missionaries, Puello said.
“He had some people inside the court that asked him for money, and he was part of this scheme,” Puello said.
Coq denied the requested US$60,000 payment amounted to a bribe.
“I have worked for 10 people for four days working all hours,” he said. “Look at what hour I’m working now, responding to these calls. I have the right to this money.”
On Friday, Coq had told reporters that he was working for no fee. Puello said Coq initially requested US$10,000 but kept asking for more. He said that when Coq reached US$60,000, he said he could guarantee it would lead to the Americans’ release.
A magistrate charged the group’s members on Thursday with child kidnapping and criminal association for trying to take 33 children out of Haiti without the proper documents. The Americans said they were a humanitarian mission to rescue orphans after Haiti’s Jan. 12 quake.
Coq said on Thursday that the group’s leader, Laura Silsby of Meridian, Idaho, deceived the others by telling them she had the proper documents to remove the children from Haiti.
The Dominican consul in Haiti, Carlos Castillo, has said he warned Silsby on Jan. 29 that she lacked the required papers and risked being arrested for child trafficking. Asked if Silsby had deceived the other nine Baptists by assuring them she had the proper papers, Puello said on Saturday, “I believe that is true.”
NBC News said some of the missionaries handed an NBC producer a note through bars of their holding cell that listed the names of all of them but Silsby and her former nanny, Charisa Coulter.
“We only came as volunteers. We had nothing to do with any documents and have been lied to,” NBC quoted the note as saying. “Please, we fear [for] our lives.”
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