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Haitian Judge Bernard Saint-Vil, has dismissed the kidnapping and criminal association charges against the 10 American missionaries who had been detained for trying to move a busload of children out of Haiti to the Dominican Republic just after the Jan. 12th earthquake.
Unfortunately for Laura Silsby, though, the woman who led the Idaho-based group, the judge refused to drop another charge against her for organizing the effort to transport the 33 children to an orphanage (that she claimed) the Baptists were setting up in the Dominican Republic.
Silsby faces up to three years in prison if convicted on the remaining charge, the "organization of irregular trips," from a 1980 statute restricting travel out of Haiti signed by then-dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier. Source
The judge told the Associated Press that the charge of organizing the trip was also pending against Jean Sainvil, a Haitian-born pastor from Atlanta, who also helped organize the venture. Sainvil did not immediately respond to a message left on his voice mail.
On Feb. 17, the judge released eight of the Americans after concluding that parents voluntarily gave up their children in the belief that the Americans would give them a better life. He freed the ninth, March 8th, leaving only Silsby in custody.
Caleb Stegall, an attorney in Perry, Kansas, who represents four of the missionaries, said he had expected the charges to be dropped once his clients were allowed to leave Haiti. Still, he said, "They can have some closure."
Hiram Sasser, lawyer for former detainee Jim Allen of Amarillo, Texas, said Allen's family and friends were grateful.
"Obviously, we think it's great," said Sasser, a lawyer with the Liberty Institute, a non-profit religious rights activist group based in Plano, Texas. Source: Haiti tosses kidnapping charges against Americans, AP
I'd bet that Silsby does not think the judge's decision was so great. But since she's not talking, we can only speculate.
