Port-au-Prince: Ten members of a US Christian group could be charged with kidnapping minors and child-trafficking over an attempt to smuggle a group of children out of quake-hit Haiti, officials said.
Amid growing concern over the safety of hundreds of thousands of women and children left vulnerable after the January 12 quake, the ten could face trial in US court where, if convicted, they could face severe penalties.
Mazar Fortil, interim prosecutor for the main Port-au-Prince court, told AFP the group may also face a lesser charge of criminal conspiracy, but said it was "too early to tell" whether they will be transferred to the United States.
Haiti`s Culture and Communications Minister Marie Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said a Haitian judge would decide whether to transfer the case, but a first appearance for the group scheduled Monday was postponed because a Creole language interpreter had not been made available.
The five men and five women with US passports, as well as two Haitians, were seized late Friday as they tried to cross into the neighboring Dominican Republic in a bus with 33 children aged between two months and 14 years.
Laura Silsby, head of the Idaho-based group called New Life Children`s Refuge, insisted the group`s aims were entirely altruistic.
"We came here literally to just help the children. Our intentions were good," she told AFP from police detention. "We wanted to help those who lost parents in the quake or were abandoned."
PTI
