Eight American missionaries freed by a Haitian judge landed in Miami early yesterday, nearly three weeks after the group was charged with kidnapping for trying to take 33 children out of the quake-stricken country.
A US Air Force C-130 cargo plane carrying the Americans landed just after midnight at Miami International Airport, said Lieutenant Kenneth Scholz of the US Southern Command. After arriving, seven of the eight went to a hotel adjoining the airport.
Ignoring reporters’ questions, the group walked briskly through the hotel lobby and got in an elevator as photographers snapped pictures.
Their swift departure from Haiti began a day earlier when Judge Bernard Saint-Vil said eight of the 10 missionaries were free to leave without bail because parents of the children had testified they voluntarily gave their children to the missionaries believing the Americans would give them a better life.
“The parents gave their kids away voluntarily,” Saint-Vil said in explaining his decision.
He said, however, that he still wanted to question the group’s leader, Laura Silsby, and her former nanny, Charisa Coulter, because they had visited Haiti prior to the quake to inquire about obtaining orphans.
Just after dusk in Haiti, the bedraggled, sweat-stained group of eight walked out of the jail escorted by US diplomats.
They waited until they were safely inside a white embassy van before some flashed smiles and gave a thumbs up to reporters. Their plane took off from Port-au-Prince shortly thereafter as a group of reporters watched.
Silas Thompson, 19, of Twin Falls, Idaho, plopped into the back seat, breathing heavily and beaming with relief. He had accompanied his father Paul, a pastor, on the mission not knowing that Silsby had not obtained the proper papers, said his US-based lawyer, Caleb Stegall.
The missionaries were charged with child kidnapping for trying to take 33 Haitian children to the Dominican Republic on Jan. 29 without Haitian adoption certificates.
Their detentions came just as aid officials were urging a halt to short-cut adoptions in the wake of the earthquake. Before their release, Haiti’s No. 2 justice official, Claudy Gassent, informed them of the judge’s decision, but said he also gave them a lecture.
“They know they broke the law,” he said.
The missionaries say they were on a do-it-yourself “rescue mission” to take child quake victims to a hastily prepared orphanage in the Dominican Republic, denying the trafficking charge.
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