Kidnappers To Be Released

I hope this is not true, but I suspect it probably is. An unnamed source in the Haitian judiciary is saying that the presiding judge of the case of the 10 American christian kidnappers is going to release all ten and drop the charges -- probably today (Thursday).

The unnamed source says, "One thing an investigating judge seeks in a criminal investigation is criminal intentions on the part of the people involved and there is nothing that shows that criminal intention on the part of the Americans."

Frankly, that's just ludicrous! If that reason was taken to its logical conclusion, then very few crimes could be prosecuted. How can a court prove "criminal intentions"? It seems to me that the very fact that a person committed the crime should be sufficient to prove criminal intentions. And these nuts tried to smuggle 33 children out of the country illegally.

These "christians" could have determined if these children were really orphans, but they didn't. They could have secured the necessary paperwork to take the children out of the country if they were truly trying to help, but they didn't even try to do that (and they had been told by Dominican authorities not to enter their country without that paperwork). They even lied to the children -- some thought they were going to camp.

What these people did was illegal, and would be illegal in any country on any continent. They are kidnappers on a large scale and should be prosecuted. If they were not Americans and "christians", they would have been prosecuted. I suspect this release is just a political act by the Haitian government to please the American government (and get more aid and considerations in the future from the United States).

It reduces the kidnapped children to nothing more than political pawns, and that is wrong. These criminals are lucky that the Haitian government is willing to play this as a political game. If they'd tried this in the U.S. (or many other countries), they'd be spending a lot of years in prison.