 Haiti's prime minister says the needs of Haitians should not be overshadowed |
The Haitian prime minister has warned that the case of 10 US missionaries charged with child abduction is a "distraction" from earthquake recovery.
Jean-Max Bellerive said more than 200,000 people had died in the quake and one million still needed help.
The group of missionaries has been charged with child abduction and criminal conspiracy.
They deny allegations that they tried to smuggle 33 children across the border to the Dominican Republic.
When stopped on the border last Friday, the group said they were taking the children to an orphanage. But it has since emerged some of the youngsters' parents were still alive.
'In good faith'
Mr Bellerive said the case of the missionaries risked diverting international attention from the continued plights of the Port-au-Prince residents who had lost their homes and livelihoods.
"I believe it's a distraction for the Haitian people because they are talking more now about 10 people than they are about one million people suffering in the streets," he said.
 Laura Silsby says the group acted out of compassion |
The group's lawyer, Edwin Coq, said his clients were "naive" but not malicious in their actions.
"They had no idea they were violating the law. They were acting in good faith and they just wanted to help," he said.
But, in comments reported by the Washington Post, he added: "If there is someone that the justice system must retain for some questioning, it is the leader of the group, Madame Laura."
From Washington, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said for the first time that the two governments were discussing the diplomatically sensitive case.
"It was unfortunate, whatever their motivation, that this group of Americans took matters into their own hands," Mrs Clinton added.
Haitian officials have said that the cases of the 10 US citizens will now be sent to an investigating judge who will decide how to proceed.
If convicted they face lengthy jail terms, says the BBC's Paul Adams, in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince.
'Kidnappers'
After Thursday's hearing the 10 missionaries were taken back to the jail where they have been kept since last 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.
Mr Bellerive has labelled the Americans "kidnappers".
Justice Minister Paul Denis has said that they should be tried in Haiti despite the damage done to the country's judicial infrastructure and casualties among judges and court staff.
There had been suggestions that 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 US ambassador to Haiti, Kenneth Merten, said that the US would do all it could to ensure the group were treated fairly and in accordance with Haitian law.
Single village
The children, who are from aged from two to 12, are now in the care of the Austrian-run SOS Children's Village in Port-au-Prince.
Twenty-one of the children were from a single village outside the capital and were handed over willingly by their parents, our correspondent says.
Residents in the village of Callebas told an Associated Press news agency reporter that they had handed their children over through a local orphanage worker who said he was acting on the Americans' behalf.
The worker is said to have promised the families that the missionaries would educate their children in neighbouring Dominican Republic.
A number of parents in the badly-damaged village said they would find it difficult to provide for their children if they came back.
Ms Silsby has said her group had met a Haitian pastor by chance when they arrived last week, and that he had helped them gather the children. She also admitted that they did not have the proper paperwork.
"Our intent was to help only those children that needed us most, that had lost either both their mother and father, or had lost one of their parents and the other had abandoned them," she said from her jail cell on Wednesday.
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