AP TELEVISION
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
++QUALITY AS INCOMING++
1. Various of US missionaries being escorted to courthouse, with faces covered
2. Close-up of security official, US missionaries seen behind in hallway of courthouse, door closing
3. US missionary being escorted into courthouse
4. SOUNDBITE: (Haitian Creole) Jean-Louise Martine, Chief of Staff for Haitian Judiciary Department:
"They are waiting here to receive further instructions. The judge will meet with them here and question them. And they are not fine with you staying here and filming them."
5. Various of US missionaries being brought to courthouse with faces covered
DEPARTMENT OF STATE TELEVISION
Washington, DC, US
6. Wide of US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton walking in to news conference
7. SOUNDBITE: (English) Hillary Rodham Clinton, US Secretary of State:
"We are providing consular services, we have full access to them. The American ambassador is speaking with his counterparts in the Haitian government. Obviously this is a matter for the Haitian judicial system. We are going to continue to provide support, as we do in every instance like this, to American citizens who have been charged and hope that this matter can be resolved in an expeditious way. But it is something that a sovereign nation is pursuing based on the evidence that it presented when the charges were announced. Enjoy the snow. Take care."
8. Clinton walks out
STORYLINE:
Ten US Baptist missionaries accused of trying to take three dozen children out of Haiti without permission appeared in court in the capital Port-au-Prince on Friday.
Jean-Louise Martine, a senior Haitian judicial official, said the missionaries appeared before an investigative judge in a closed hearing.
Martine said the Americans did not want to be photographed or filmed.
They were escorted into the building one by one by Haitian police who covered their heads with a blue sheet.
None of them responded to reporters'' questions.
A lawyer for the 10 missionaries told reporters he would ask the judge to grant them "provisional release," a type of bail without money posted, until their trial, a date for which has not been established.
The investigating judge charged the Americans on Thursday with kidnapping for trying to take 33 children across the border into the Dominican Republic on January 29 without documentation.
Defence lawyer Edwin Coq said one of the missionaries, Laura Silsby, knew the group couldn''t remove the youngsters without proper paperwork.
Coq characterised the other nine missionaries as unknowingly being caught up in actions they didn''t understand.
Each of the Americans was charged with one count of kidnapping, which carries a sentence of five to 15 years in prison, and one of criminal association, punishable by three to nine years.
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters in Washington on Friday that this was "obviously" a matter for the Haitian judicial system.
"We''re going to continue to provide support, as we do in every instance like this, to American citizens who have been charged and hope that this
matter can be resolved in an expeditious way," she said.
She said the US had "full access" to the detained missionaries.
The Baptist group, most of whose members are from two Idaho churches, had said they were rescuing abandoned children and orphans.
At least two-thirds of the children involved in the case, ranging in age from 2 to 12, have parents, although the parents of some told The Associated Press they gave them up willingly because the missionaries promised the children a better life.
The United Nations Children''s Fund (UNICEF) says Haiti had 380-thousand orphans and abandoned children even before the quake struck on 12 January 2010.
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