A Haitian judge has recommended that a group of jailed American missionaries be released provisionally, almost two weeks after they were stopped from leaving the country with a busload of children.
Judge Bernard Saint-Vil told The Associated Press he was making his recommendation after questioning the Americans and hearing testimony from the Haitian parents involved.
"After listening to the families, I see the possibility that they can all be released," Saint-Vil told AP. "I am recommending that all 10 Americans be released."
Saint-Vil said the Haitian families told him that they willingly gave their children to the 10 Baptists, believing they would educate and care for them.
Saint-Vil is required to send his recommendation to the prosecutor, who may agree or object. But the judge has the final say as to whether the missionaries will be set free.
It is not clear whether such a recommendation would result in charges being dropped against the accused Americans. It's also not clear whether their possible release means they would be allowed to leave Haiti.
The accused Americans were charged last week with child endangerment and criminal association. They were arrested for allegedly trying to take 33 children across the border to an orphanage they were trying to set up in the Dominican Republic.
P.J. Crowley, a spokesman from the U.S. State Department, said that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had not intervened in the case.
"We have been very careful not to intervene specifically in this case," Crowley said. "This is a matter for Haitian authorities to resolve."
Crowley added that Washington was "satisfied with the overall conduct of this case."
The group's leader, Laura Silsby, of Meridian, Idaho, has claimed that the children were obtained from Haitian orphanages or from distant relatives. But at least 20 of the children involved are from the same village and still have living parents.
Silsby declined to talk about the case when approached by an AP reporter at a Haitian jail where the female Americans were being held.
"We've said all we're going to say for now. We don't want to talk now," Silsby said Wednesday. "Maybe tomorrow."
At a separate facility where the men are being held, Paul Thompson, of Twin Falls, Idaho, said the men "will not talk unless our lawyer is present."
Hiram Sasser, a Dallas lawyer representing Thompson's cousin, Jim Allen, said his client was recruited for the mission to Haiti only 48 hours before his arrest.
Sasser said Silsby told his client that he would be participating in an emergency rescue mission.
"He did not know many of the other people who were on the mission trip, or what other people were going to do, or about paperwork," Sasser said.
Silsby decided to start an orphanage in the Dominican Republic last summer, and she registered the non-profit New Life Children's Refuge foundation in November.
Following the devastating Jan. 12 quake in Port-au-Prince, Silsby accelerated her plan and recruited fellow missionaries. Silsby has previously told The Associated Press that she wants to save suffering children.
After Silsby was arrested, she said she did not have all the requisite Haitian papers needed to remove children from the country.
With files from The Associated Press
