PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) – Five of the 10 American  Baptist missionaries accused of illegally trying to take  children out of earthquake-shattered Haiti left their jail  cells temporarily to plead their case to a judge yesterday.

The missionaries were arrested on Friday trying to cross  into the Dominican Republic from Haiti with a busload of 33  children they said were orphaned by the Jan. 12 quake. They  denied charges they were engaged in child trafficking,  insisting they were trying to help vulnerable orphans.

Haitian police have said some of the children have living  parents.

The case could be diplomatically sensitive at a time when  the United States is spearheading a huge relief effort to help  hundreds of thousands of Haitian quake victims, and as U.S. aid  groups pour millions of dollars of donations into Haiti.

The five missionaries were questioned behind closed doors  at Haiti’s judicial police headquarters in Port-au-Prince,  where they are being held behind bars.

They were escorted from their cells by uniformed Haitian  National Police officers to a separate room where the judge  awaited along with a clerk and a translator.

“I heard five of them. Then I will hear the other five  tomorrow,” Judge Ezaie Pierre-Louis said. “After the hearing  tomorrow, I will make a report to the prosecutor, then he will  decide what he does next.”

Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Lassegue said the  missionaries did not have lawyers present.

One of the missionaries, a woman, was returned to the  police building yesterday after being treated at a hospital  for hypertension.

Before the hearing, prosecutor Mazarre Fortil said  authorities were in the preliminary stages of the  investigation. “I am here to hear the Americans, to know more  about the case, about what were their intentions,” he said.

“We are looking deeper into what happened to determine the  next steps.”

SOME PARENTS GAVE

UP CHILDREN

Haitian authorities have repeatedly expressed concerns that  child traffickers could prey on children in the chaos that  followed the earthquake that killed up to 200,000 people.

Government officials said the detained Americans had no  paperwork proving the children were orphans or giving them  permission to take them out of the country.

Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive called the arrested  Americans “kidnappers” but later acknowledged the possibility  they were misguided and acted in good faith.

Haitian police say the parents of several minors  intercepted with the Americans have said they agreed to give up  their children in the hope they would receive an education and  a better life.

“I put them on the bus with my own hands,” Lely Laurentus  told CNN, describing how he handed over two young daughters to  the missionary group. CNN said 21 of the 33 children came from  families in a small mountain village outside Port-au-Prince.

U.N. human rights experts warned yesterday that children  were at increased risk of being abducted, enslaved, sold or  trafficked due to increased insecurity in quake-hit Haiti, the  poorest country in the Americas.

“Unaccompanied children are particularly vulnerable and it  is essential, wherever possible, to register, trace and reunite  children with their families,” the United Nations said in a  statement.

In Geneva yesterday, the top U.N. relief official said the  aid operation in Haiti had been complicated and slow, but was  making significant progress, especially in getting food to  survivors.

Finding shelter for the 1 million homeless was now the main  priority, said John Holmes. He added the situation in badly  damaged Port-au-Prince was mostly calm, apart from “isolated  incidents of looting or attacks on convoys of food.”

“This is a potentially volatile environment and we have to  make sure it doesn’t degenerate from fights over food into more  serious civil unrest,” he said.