MIAMI –- Eight American missionaries freed by a Haitian judge landed in Miami early Thursday, nearly three weeks after the group was charged with kidnapping for trying to take 33 children out of the quake-stricken country. A US Air Force C-130 cargo plane carrying the Americans landed at 12:04 a.m. at Miami International Airport, said Lt. Kenneth Scholz of the US Southern Command. Two other missionaries with the group remained in detention in Haiti for further questioning. After arriving, seven of the eight went to a hotel adjoining the airport. Ignoring repoters' questions, the group walked briskly through the hotel lobby and got in an elevator as photographers snapped pictures. Their swift departure from Haiti began a day earlier when Judge Bernard Saint-Vil said eight of the 10 missionaries were free to leave without bail because parents of the children had testified they voluntarily gave their children to the missionaries believing the Americans would give them a better life.
