Business in shambles, home foreclosed.
April 26, 2010
CNN: American missionary Laura Silsby will stand trial in Haiti on a charge of arranging irregular travel, a judge ruled Monday, but more serious charges against her and nine fellow missionaries were dropped.
Judge Bernard Saint-Vil dropped kidnapping and criminal association charges against Silsby and nine other missionaries who were stopped while trying to take 33 Haitian children out of the country after a devastating earthquake rocked Haiti in January.
People convicted of arranging irregular travel face from six months to three years in prison.
Silsby’s nine fellow missionaries were released from detention and returned to the United States weeks ago, but Silsby has remained behind bars in Haiti.
The judge ruled that Silsby and Jeant Saint-Vil, a Haitian-American pastor who is not related to the judge, will stand trial on the charge of arranging irregular travel, but it was not immediately clear when the trial would take place.
The judge’s decision means that the nine other missionaries no longer face any charges in Haiti.
Haitian authorities stopped the 10 on January 29 as they tried to take 33 Haitian children across the border into the Dominican Republic. Authorities said the group didn’t have proper legal documentation.
The 10 Americans, many of whom belong to a Baptist church in Idaho, have said they were trying to help the children get to a safe place after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake flattened cities and towns in Haiti.
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COMMENT:HAITIAN-TRUTH.ORG
This is really bizarre.
The Haitian judge is charging the lady with arranging irregular travel, for the Haitian children she was trying to save from the January 12, 2010 realities in Haiti: STARVATION…STARVATION…STARVATION!!!
She could have just left them behind. Instead, she did what a person of conscience would do.
The missionaries were then held by Preval – against the advice of his legal advisors – as blackmail against the American government.
On a parallel, yet different issue, they haven’t charged Prime Minister Bellerive with arranging irregular travel after he was arrested, on the evening after the quake, at the Dominican border with $8,000,000 US Dollars in an aluminum suitcase.
Obviously we have no shame.
People come to help us and this is the way we repay their efforts, even though sometime misguided.
A quick glance in our President’s direction would find many more crimes deserving jail, but we tolerate his actions, even as he steals our childrens’ future.
The lady is being used by Preval to pressure the Americans in a foolish game.