Judge in Haiti holds final hearing for jailed Americans but says not ready to release them

Haiti judge not ready to release 2 US missionaries

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Two Americans still jailed on kidnapping charges in Haiti will have to wait for their freedom, Judge Bernard Saint-Vil said Tuesday.

The judge had said earlier that testimony from three witnesses about the missionaries’ efforts to set up an orphanage in the neighboring Dominican Republic would allow him to free Laura Silsby, 40, and Charisa Coulter, 24.

The Dominican witnesses gave the expected testimony Tuesday at a meeting in his office, the judge told The Associated Press — but then he said he still needed to deliver all his evidence to the prosecutor general’s office and await its reply.

Once the prosecutor responds, the judge can drop the charges all together or continue his investigation while releasing the two Baptist missionaries. In either case they would be free to leave Haiti.

“The final decision is mine,” Saint-Vil said.

The two women were in good spirits while waiting for the hearing, dressed in casual shirts, shorts and sandals, chatting with members of their legal team and eating sandwiches. Afterward they filled out U.S. Embassy and court forms before boarding a Haitian police truck that took them back to jail.

“We’re waiting on the judge’s decision and on our God,” Silsby told reporters as they left.

They and eight other American missionaries were detained Jan. 29 as they tried to take 33 children out of Haiti without the required documents. Silsby, the group’s leader, said the children were orphans, but AP determined all the children had at least one living parent.

Haitian adoption rules were tightened following the earthquake to prevent child trafficking.

“We need to be very actively involved in seeing that all the procedures that are in place to protect the welfare of minors are followed to avoid confusion and misunderstandings,” U.S. State Department spokesman Charles Luoma-Overstreet told reporters after the hearing.

Supporters of the two women say the group misunderstood the rules.

The judge released the other eight members Feb. 17 after concluding parents voluntarily gave up their children in the belief the Americans would give them a better life.

He kept Silsby and Coulter, her former nanny, in custody, saying he wanted to question them because they had visited Haiti before the quake to inquire about obtaining orphans.