PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) – Haiti’s quake-shattered  justice system, grappling with collapsed courts, destroyed  records and homeless employees, would be hard-pressed to hold a  high-profile trial for 10 Americans charged with kidnapping  children, Haitian lawyers and rights advocates said yesterday.

The detained American missionaries, most of whom belong to  an Idaho-based Baptist church, were charged on Thursday with  child abduction and criminal association. A judge was scheduled  to resume a hearing on their case today.

The main courthouse in Port-au-Prince, known as the Palace  of Justice, was reduced to rubble by the Jan. 12 earthquake,  and the chief judge, Roc Cadet, died in the collapse along with  many judiciary employees. Others are homeless and scattered.

The Ministry of Justice partially collapsed and Justice  Minister Paul Denis had to be pulled from the rubble. He is now  working from a small office behind the ministry.

Court records were buried in the debris and with the system  effectively shut down, jails are filling with suspects arrested  for looting and other crimes in the aftermath of the quake.

“It is very difficult to give a fair trial to the Americans  right now. The whole system has been affected,” said Renan  Hedouville, head of Haiti’s Lawyers Committee for Individual  Rights. “Even the president of the court died.”

“We should not be bluffing by pretending we have the means  to try that case,” he said.

Last week, judges managed to conduct a series of hearings  for the arrested U.S. missionaries. But virtually no other  hearings are being held by a system criticized even before the  earthquake for keeping suspects jailed for months or years  without hearings or trials.

“The justice system is dysfunctional,” lawyer Rodrigue  Dumas said. “I believe, in these conditions, the rights of the  Americans will not be protected. Therefore the judgment cannot  be fair.”

Haitian authorities say the missionaries tried to take a  busload of 33 children across the border into the Dominican  Republic without papers proving the minors were orphans or any  official permission to take them out of the country.
The case is diplomatically sensitive at a time when the  United States is leading aid efforts following the earthquake  last month that killed more than 200,000 people and left more  than a million homeless.

Aid groups have flooded into Haiti to provide emergency  food, water and medical services to survivors, and several  thousand U.S. troops are on the ground to help U.N.  peacekeepers and Haitian police with security.