Missionaries Charged

They have been charged with kidnapping:

Haiti has charged 10 US missionaries with child abduction and criminal conspiracy for allegedly trying to smuggle 33 children out of the country.

Haitian officials said their cases would now be sent to an investigating judge who would decide how to proceed.

If convicted they face lengthy jail terms, says the BBC's Paul Adams, in Haiti's quake-hit capital city.

[...]

After the hearing the 10 missionaries were taken back to the jail where they have been kept since Friday.

Amid chaotic scenes, the group was bundled into a van outside the court.

"I feel good," the group's leader Laura Silsby told reporters. "I trust in God."

The five men and five women, most of them from Idaho, were due to have a hearing earlier in the week, but that was postponed because of a lack of interpreters.

Haiti's Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive has labeled the Americans "kidnappers".

Justice Minister Paul Denis said they should be tried in Haiti despite the damage done to the country's judicial infrastructure and casualties among judges and court staff.

There have been suggestions the 10 could be tried in the US.

"It is Haitian law that has been violated it is up to the Haitian authorities to hear and judge the case," he told AFP news agency.

"I don't see any reason why they should be tried in the United States."

The arrogance of people to go into a sovereign, if damaged, nation and simply take children without proper authority and permission or any actual verification of the lives of the families of the children is beyond appalling (yet, it's unsurprising). I understand the desire to help but this sure as shit isn't it.