Haiti: Baptists may be tried in US

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Haiti’s prime minister said Monday it’s clear to him that the 10 American Baptists who tried to take 33 children out of his quake-ravaged country without permission “knew what they were doing was wrong.”

But Prime Minister Max Bellerive also told The Associated Press his country is open to having the Americans go before courts in the United States because his own nation’s judicial system was devastated by the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The aborted Baptist “rescue mission” has become a distraction for a crippled government trying to provide basic life support to millions of earthquake survivors.

But the prime minister said some legal system needs to determine whether the Americans were acting in good faith — as they claim — or are child traffickers in a nation that has struggled to fight exploitation of children.

“It is clear now that they were trying to cross the border without papers. It is clear now that some of the children have live parents,” he told the AP.

“And it is clear now that they knew what they were doing was wrong.”

If they were acting in good faith, “perhaps the courts will try to be more lenient with them,” he said.

Members of the church group, most from Idaho, have insisted they only were trying to rescue child victims of the quake. Few if any had any significant experience in international charity.

Since their arrest Friday near the border, the church group has been held inside two small concrete rooms in the same judicial police headquarters building where ministers have makeshift offices and give disaster-response briefings. They have not yet been charged.

One of their lawyers said they were being treated poorly: “There is no air conditioning, no electricity. It is very disturbing,” Attorney Jorge Puello told the AP by phone from the Dominican Republic, where the Baptists hoped to shelter the children in a rented beach hotel.

One of the Americans, Charisa Coulter of Boise, Idaho, was being treated Monday at the University of Miami’s field hospital near the capital’s international airport. Looking pale and speaking with difficulty from a green Army cot, the 24-year-old Coulter said she had either severe dehydration or the flu. A diabetic, she initially thought her insulin had gone bad in the heat.

Two Haitian police officers stood besides the cot, guarding her.

“They’re treating me pretty good,” she said, adding that Haitian police didn’t bring her group any food or water, but that U.S. officials have delivered water and MREs to eat. “I’m not concerned. I’m pretty confident that it will all work out,” she said.

Investigators have been trying to determine how the Americans got the children and whether any of the traffickers that have plagued the impoverished country were involved.

Their detained spokeswoman, Laura Silsby, conceded that she had not obtained the proper Haitian documents but told the AP from detention that the group was “just trying to do the right thing” amid the chaos.

The 33 kids, ranging in age from 2 months to 12 years and with their names written in tape on their shirts, were being sheltered in a temporary children’s home, where some told aid workers that they have surviving parents. Lassegue said the Social Affairs Ministry was trying to find them.