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Haitian U17 soccer players go missing during US stopover

Most of Haiti's under-17 national soccer team apparently deserted the squad during an airport stopover in New York hours before a planned Wednesday trip to South Korea to prepare for the U17 World Cup.

By Wednesday afternoon, five or six of the 13 missing players had returned to the airport and turned themselves in to team officials, said Felix Augustin, the Haitian consul in New York. It was unclear where the youngsters had been and why they had left the team, he said.

"We're still looking for the others," he said by telephone. "All I know is that six of them have been retrieved and we're still looking for the others."

Most of the team's 18 players went missing from John F. Kennedy International Airport from Tuesday night to Wednesday morning, Augustin said.

community

Earlier, Augustin had said that officials were making calls to members of the Haitian community to try to get the children back.

The players arrived from Haiti on Tuesday and were scheduled to leave early on Wednesday for Seoul, South Korea, to play in a friendly tournament ahead of the U17 World Cup next month.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, said it was aware of the situation and had assigned police officers to investigate. A spokeswoman for the US embassy in Haiti, Shaila Manyam, said embassy officials were looking into the matter.

Augustin said authorities believed adults may be involved in the players' desertion and warned they could face criminal charges unless they turn over the minors.

"It seems that some adults may have been involved. If so, they are going to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," Augustin said.

warning

Speaking with a Haitian Creole-language radio station in New York, the president of the Haitian Football Federation, Yves Jean-Bart, warned the youngsters that they were hurting their futures and threatened to involve US authorities "unless these players reinstate themselves as soon as possible."

Jean-Bart gave no indication why the players would abandon the team but Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and thousands of Haitians leave the country each year to escape miserable living conditions, violence and political instability.

A spokeswoman for US Customs and Border Protection, Lucille Cirillo, said the agency would help investigators in any way possible. But, she said, immigration officials would not typically become involved in such cases until the expiration of the players' tourist visas, which could take up to six months.
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