Haiti's prime minister has criticised 10 US missionaries¹ who were arrested as they tried to take 33 Haitian children out of the earthquake-hit country.

海地总理强烈批评企图将33名遭地震袭击的儿童带出海地而被逮捕的10位美国传教士。

The missionaries say they did not know they were doing anything wrong

Jean-Max Bellerive described them as "kidnappers²绑匪" and said they had known "what they were doing was wrong".

He said some of the children had parents who were alive, and that the government was trying to locate them.

A spokeswoman for the missionaries said they had wanted to take the children to an orphanage³孤儿院 in the Dominican Republic.

"They really didn't have any paperwork... I did not understand that that would really be required," Laura Silsby told CNN.

"We believe we have been charged very falsely with trafficking非法交易. We all gave up everything we had... to come here to help these children and by no means绝不 are any part of that horrendous⁴可怕的，惊人的 practice."

Hearing

A Haitian judge is expected to decide on Tuesday whether the five men and five women from Idaho have a case to answer. A hearing had been scheduled for Monday, but was postponed⁵ because of a lack of interpreters for the Americans.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Mr Bellerive said that if they had been acting⁶ in good faith, "perhaps the courts will try to be more lenient仁慈的，宽大的 with them".

But he noted⁸: "It is clear now that they were trying to cross the border without papers. It is clear now that some of the children have live parents. And it is clear now that they knew what they were doing was wrong."

Mr Bellerive said Haiti was open to having the Americans tried in the US since most government and court buildings had been destroyed.

US embassy officials would not say whether Washington would accept judicial⁹ proceedings¹⁰, insisting the case remained one for the Haitian authorities. They noted that nobody had yet been charged.