By Joseph Guyler Delva
PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - A Haitian judge on Friday signed an order to free one of two U.S. missionaries imprisoned on child kidnapping charges, but a paperwork problem delayed her release.
The order will allow U.S. citizen Charisa Coulter to leave the Caribbean nation but the leader of the group of missionaries, Laura Silsby, was to remain in jail, said judge Bernard Sainvil.
Haitian authorities in January arrested 10 Americans, most of them members of a Baptist church in Idaho, on charges that they tried to take 33 Haitian children out of the country without proper documents.
The case put a spotlight on the vulnerability of thousands of children orphaned in a January 12 earthquake that killed as many as 300,000 people, according to government estimates.
The other missionaries were freed last month after the judge found no evidence of criminal intent on their part. All the missionaries protested their innocence.
Critics say attention focussed on the case has been a distraction from the hardships faced by more than 1 million Haitians displaced by the quake.
Coulter was returned to custody on Friday because court administrators could not find an official stamp necessary to validate the judge's signed order, Sainvil said.
"I already signed the release order. All that is left now is to seal it but they cannot find the official stamp," he said.
There was no chance that Coulter would be released before Monday, chief prosecutor Joseph Manes Louis told Reuters.
"I returned the order to the judge because there is an administrative problem. Once the problem is solved I will proceed according to the law," he said.
Silsby was being held for further investigation.
In the chaos that followed the earthquake, hundreds of Haitian children were taken out of the country for adoption in the United States and other countries. Many of the adoptive parents had started the adoption process before the quake happened.
But most of the children Silsby's group tried to take to the Dominican Republic were not orphans. Several of their parents told the judge they had given the children to the group because they believed the Americans would feed and educate them.
The government banned adoptions of earthquake orphans amid reports of an increase in child trafficking and other forms of abuse and fear that children were being prematurely separated from their parents.
(Writing by Matthew Bigg; Editing by Eric Beech)
