US missionaries 'knew they were doing wrong' in Haiti
New Life Children's Refuge members (top L-R) Drew Culberth, Steve McMullen, Silas Thompson, Paul Thompson, Jim Allen (bottom L-R) identity unknown and Carla Thompson at a police station in Port-au-Prince on 31 January
The missionaries say they did not know they were doing anything wrong
Haiti's prime minister has criticised 10 US missionaries who were arrested as they tried to take 33 Haitian children out of the earthquake-hit country.
Max Bellerive told the Associated Press news agency that they "knew what they were doing was wrong".
He said some of the children had parents who were alive, and that the government was trying to locate them.
Mr Bellerive added that his country was open to having the Americans tried in the United States.
He said a judicial system needed to determine whether the five men and five women from an Idaho-based Christian group were acting in good faith - as they have claimed - or were child traffickers.
A Haitian judge had been expected to decide on Monday whether the Americans had a case to answer, but the matter was postponed for 24 hours because of a lack of interpreters for the Americans.
The 10 have been held since Friday when they tried to enter the Dominican Republic with the children.
They insist the children have no living parents and were being taken to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic.
They say they were unaware they had done anything wrong and believed they had been given the right paperwork to take the children out of the country.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8491996.stm
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