10 missionaries charged with kidnapping in Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Ten U.S. Baptist missionaries were charged with kidnapping yesterday for trying to take 33 children out of Haiti to a hastily arranged refuge just as officials were trying to protect children from predators in the chaos of a great earthquake.

The Haitian lawyer who represents the 10 Americans portrayed nine of his clients as innocents caught up in a scheme they did not understand. But attorney Edwin Coq did not defend the actions of the group leader, Laura Silsby, though he continued to represent her.

"I'm going to do everything I can to get the nine out. They were naive. They had no idea what was going on and they did not know that they needed official papers to cross the border," Coq said. "But Silsby did."

The Americans, most members of two Idaho churches, said they were rescuing abandoned children and orphans from a nation that UNICEF says had 380,000 even before the catastrophic Jan. 12 quake.

But at least two-thirds of the children, who range in age from 2 to 12, have parents who gave them away because they said the Americans promised the children a better life.

U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten showed up after 5 p.m. outside judicial police headquarters, where the Americans are being held and where President René Préval and top ministers now have temporary offices because theirs were destroyed in the quake.

"The U.S. justice system cannot interfere in what's going on with these Americans right now," he told reporters.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the Americans' behavior "unfortunate, whatever the motivation."

Most of the children came from the quake-ravaged village of Callebas, where residents told The Associated Press that they handed over their children to the Americans because they were unable to feed or clothe them after the earthquake.

Their stories contradicted Silsby's account that the children came from collapsed orphanages or were handed over by distant relatives.

The children were being cared for at the Austrian-run SOS Children's Village in Port-au-Prince.