Lawyer for Missionaries in Haiti Arrested

(AP)  Dominican police have arrested a fugitive who acted as the lawyer for U.S. missionaries accused of kidnapping 33 Haitian children.

Jorge Puello initially served as the group's legal adviser and spokesman but authorities later said he was wanted for trafficking women and children in the U.S. and El Salvador.

The National Drug Control Agency says the 32-year-old Puello was arrested in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant late Thursday in the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo.

Soledad Puello is his mother. She told The Associated Press that she and others had negotiated with Salvadoran prosecutors for Puello to turn himself in.

Puello was born in New York but has both U.S. and Dominican citizenship.

[lilbear925]

The record shows that this creep also is not licensed as a lawyer, either in the Dominican Republic or Haiti. He attempted to extort $60,000 from the "missionaries" to ghe their case "taken care of", and the immediately ran when someone mentioned he was involved in human trafficking. He needs a little "education" in Hatian justice -- like sitting in a Hatian jail for about 30 years.

[hateisafourletterword]

Let this be a lesson to all you do gooder Americans. Leave other countries alone. Stop sending money, stop helping them and stop stealing their children.

I think the Haitian men can rape and pillage just fine.

[ChristianHumanist]

Apparently Puello saw an opportunity to get involved with child prostitution in Haiti using Laura Silsbury, whose purpose and intent in Haiti is not clear. I doubt that Silsby was interested in exploitation for sexual purposes, but it seems pretty clear that she had child exploitation in mind for "religious" purposes, even if it was a money raising scam involving selling kids for adoption in the U.S.

Maybe the Haitians will learn something from current U.S. policy on detainees: if you think Silsby has done something wrong, or she might do something wrong and you don't know what and can't prove it, then let's just hold her indefinitely without charge to keep her from doing something bad in the future. That way we protect the public, which is obviously a good thing. Bad people should have no rights, so much of the responsible public will go along with it and we can ignore the liberals who still think we should preserve those old-fashioned Constitutional values like no detention without trial.

http://christianhumanist.net

[brianbwb2011]

Except for the little nagging problem that if you have no proof that a person is "bad", but just assume so, it makes you a liar, kidnapper, and proven to be even worse than the person you "think" is bad.

So since there IS proof that you are in fact the "bad" one, the priority should be to detain you, present the proof, then lock you away for the good of future innocent people you will most certainly cause to be harmed.

[nor-one]

You mean like the US did in gitmo?? They actually purchased(paid bounty for) most of the detainees. All an enterprizing aphgan had to do to get his neighbours field was point his finger at him and "taliban". Then "Here is your dough, and help yourself to his land".

[Dgunner]

I say turn the man out to a crowd of relatives he is guilty of traficking. Then let this be the future norm for the convicted.Then let the dogs have him strike him from history and destroy his familys' reputation.

[TVO1CITW]

Poetic justice.