Haiti

Ten members of a U.S. Christian group, New Life Children’s Refuge, could be charged with kidnapping minors and child-trafficking over an attempt to smuggle a group of children out of Haiti, Interim Prosecutor Mazar Fortil said. Before the earthquake devastated Haiti, NLCR had planned to buy land and build an orphanage, school and church in Magante on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. But after the disaster, the mission’s aim became to “rescue Haitian orphans abandoned on the streets, makeshift hospitals or from collapsed orphanages in Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas, and bring them to New Life Children’s Refuge in Cabarete, Dominican Republic,” the charity stated in an online document. (BBC)