PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Haitian authorities were considering on Monday how to deal with a group of American missionaries accused of trying to illegally take children out of the quake-shattered Caribbean country.
The Baptist missionaries, who were arrested late on Friday, deny Haitian charges they were engaged in child trafficking and insist they were only trying to help vulnerable orphans left abandoned and destitute by the January 12 quake.
The 10 members of an Idaho-based church group were detained on Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic when they tried to cross with a busload of 33 children they said were orphaned by the devastating earthquake.
Haitian authorities, who have expressed fears that child traffickers may take advantage of the chaos and loss caused by the earthquake that killed up to 200,000 people, said the Americans had no documents proving the children were orphans or giving them permission to take them out of the country.
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