Haitian judge may free missionaries

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - The 10 U.S. missionaries charged with kidnapping for trying to take a busload of children out of Haiti should be released from jail while an investigation continues, a Haitian judge said yesterday, giving the Americans their best news since their arrests nearly two weeks ago.

Judge Bernard Saint-Vil has the final word on whether to free the missionaries, though he gave the prosecutor-general the opportunity to raise objections.

He said he was accepting defense attorneys' request to provisionally free the Americans while an investigation of the case continues.

It is unclear when the missionaries, most from an Idaho Baptist church group, might be released, and Saint-Vil said it was too early to say whether they would be able to leave this earthquake-crippled Caribbean nation if granted provisional freedom. It also is unclear what bearing releasing the missionaries might have on whether they go to trial.

Saint-Vil on Thursday privately questioned the last of a group of parents who said they willingly gave their children to the Baptist missionaries, believing the Americans would educate and care for them.

"After listening to the families, I see the possibility that they can all be released," Saint-Vil told The Associated Press.

"I am recommending that all 10 Americans be released." Saint-Vil said he delivered his recommendation to prosecutor Josephe Mannes Louis on Thursday. Louis said he would respond with his own recommendation next week. Haitian government offices are closed Friday for a national day of mourning.

The Americans were charged last week with child kidnapping and criminal association after being arrested Jan. 29 while trying to take 33 children, ages 2 to 12, across the border to an orphanage they were trying to set up in the Dominican Republic.

The following day, group leader Laura Silsby of Meridian, Idaho, told the AP the children were obtained either from orphanages or from distant relatives.

She said only children who were found not to have living parents or relatives who could care for them might be put up for adoption.

However, at least 20 of the children are from a single village and have living parents.

Some of the parents told the AP they willingly turned over their children to the missionaries because they could no longer feed or otherwise care for them - the children's school and many of their homes collapsed in the quake.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Thursday that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had not personally intervened in the case, as the U.S.-based legal team for one of the missionaries, Jim Allen of Amarillo, Texas, requested in a Tuesday letter.

"We have been very careful not to intervene specifically in this case," Crowley said. "This is a matter for Haitian authorities to resolve."