{"id":96,"date":"2010-04-27T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-27T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/haitian-judge-drops-charges-against-9-of-10-baptist-missionaries.html"},"modified":"2010-04-27T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-27T11:00:00","slug":"haitian-judge-drops-charges-against-9-of-10-baptist-missionaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/haitian-judge-drops-charges-against-9-of-10-baptist-missionaries.html","title":{"rendered":"Haiti Drops Charges Against 9 of 10 Baptist Missionaries; Organizer Remains in Jail"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Haitian judge has dropped charges against nine of the 10 Baptist missionaries from America, but group organizer Laura Silsby remains in jail there at this time. (The rest of her group had already been released in February and March.) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianpost.com\/article\/20100427\/haitian-judge-clears-9-us-christians-of-all-charges\/\">The Christian Post has the story<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The volunteers,&nbsp;predominantly from two Idaho churches,&nbsp;had tried to take&nbsp;33 Haitian &#8220;orphans&#8221; to the Dominican Republic&nbsp;after the Jan. 12 earthquake. They were arrested after officials discovered their paperwork was not in order to leave the country with the children, some of whom were not actually orphans.<\/p>\n<p>The&nbsp;remaining &#8220;arranging irregular travel&#8221; charge against Silsby carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/04\/27\/world\/americas\/27briefs-Haiti.html?partner=rssnyt&amp;emc=rss\">the Associated Press reports.<\/a>&nbsp;Her supporters, who have <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/prayerplainandsimple\/2010\/02\/prayer-for-baptist-americans-in-haiti.html\">been praying for her<\/a> release, <a href=\"http:\/\/content.usatoday.com\/communities\/ondeadline\/post\/2010\/04\/haiti-clears-10-us-missionaries-of-kidnapping-but-leader-faces-other-charge\/1\">held a rally Saturday<\/a>&nbsp;and have argued that Silsby was a well-intentioned Christian simply trying to rescue children from their earthquake-ravaged country.<\/p>\n<p>What do you think? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">*<a href=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=beliefnet\/beliefbeat\">Click here to<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><strong>subscribe to Belief Beat<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/strong><\/a>and<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/beliefbeat\">click here to<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><strong>follow Belief Beat on Twitter<\/strong><\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Haitian judge has dropped charges against nine of the 10 Baptist missionaries from America, but group organizer Laura Silsby remains in jail there at this time. (The rest of her group had already been released in February and March.) The Christian Post has the story. The volunteers,&nbsp;predominantly from two Idaho churches,&nbsp;had tried to take&nbsp;33&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Haiti Drops Charges Against 9 of 10 Baptist Missionaries; Organizer Remains in Jail - Belief Beat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/haitian-judge-drops-charges-against-9-of-10-baptist-missionaries.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Haiti Drops Charges Against 9 of 10 Baptist Missionaries; Organizer Remains in Jail - Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Haitian judge has dropped charges against nine of the 10 Baptist missionaries from America, but group organizer Laura Silsby remains in jail there at this time. (The rest of her group had already been released in February and March.) The Christian Post has the story. The volunteers,&nbsp;predominantly from two Idaho churches,&nbsp;had tried to take&nbsp;33&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/haitian-judge-drops-charges-against-9-of-10-baptist-missionaries.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-04-27T11:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Nicole Neroulias\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Haiti Drops Charges Against 9 of 10 Baptist Missionaries; Organizer Remains in Jail - Belief Beat","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/haitian-judge-drops-charges-against-9-of-10-baptist-missionaries.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Haiti Drops Charges Against 9 of 10 Baptist Missionaries; Organizer Remains in Jail - Belief Beat","og_description":"A Haitian judge has dropped charges against nine of the 10 Baptist missionaries from America, but group organizer Laura Silsby remains in jail there at this time. (The rest of her group had already been released in February and March.) The Christian Post has the story. The volunteers,&nbsp;predominantly from two Idaho churches,&nbsp;had tried to take&nbsp;33&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/haitian-judge-drops-charges-against-9-of-10-baptist-missionaries.html","og_site_name":"Belief Beat","article_published_time":"2010-04-27T11:00:00+00:00","author":"Nicole Neroulias","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/haitian-judge-drops-charges-against-9-of-10-baptist-missionaries.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/haitian-judge-drops-charges-against-9-of-10-baptist-missionaries.html","name":"Haiti Drops Charges Against 9 of 10 Baptist Missionaries; Organizer Remains in Jail - Belief Beat","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-04-27T11:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2010-04-27T11:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/42dac2ebd149a02dfe91f0f93e36761b"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/haitian-judge-drops-charges-against-9-of-10-baptist-missionaries.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/haitian-judge-drops-charges-against-9-of-10-baptist-missionaries.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/haitian-judge-drops-charges-against-9-of-10-baptist-missionaries.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Haiti Drops Charges Against 9 of 10 Baptist Missionaries; Organizer Remains in Jail"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/","name":"Belief Beat","description":"BeliefBeat - Nicole Neroulias","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/42dac2ebd149a02dfe91f0f93e36761b","name":"Nicole Neroulias","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/caf\/caf1ad99f5fc2a063b8e935cf82f65fdx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/caf\/caf1ad99f5fc2a063b8e935cf82f65fdx96.jpg","caption":"Nicole Neroulias"},"description":"Nicole Neroulias is a correspondent for Religion News Service, a secular news and photo service devoted to unbiased coverage of religion and ethics. 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She and her family live in Seattle.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/author\/nneroulias"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}