Eight American missionaries who were charged with child kidnapping in Haiti arrived back in the United States early Thursday after being freed by a judge in the quake-devastated nation. Two of their number remained behind bars and were to face questioning Thursday over the case, which has overshadowed the international relief effort after more than 217,000 people were killed in the January 12 quake.
The eight Americans checked in to the Miami International Airport hotel after arriving in the Florida city from Haiti around midnight. "The eight of them are here. They were brought by the police," a source at the hotel told AFP. A Haitian judge freed the missionaries without bail on Wednesday - though the charges were not dropped - and they were whisked to the airport in a van bearing diplomatic plates to board a US military transport plane for Miami. The American Baptist missionaries from the New Life Children's Refuge were arrested on January 29 trying to take a busload of 33 children across the border to the Dominican Republic without authorisation.