Five days after an American nurse and her daughter were kidnapped in Haiti, the U.S. State Department would not say who might be holding them or whether the abductors had made any demands to secure their release.
Alix Dorsainvil and her child were seized Thursday by armed men on the grounds of the Christian-ministry-run health clinic where she worked as a community nurse near Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince. Dorsainvil, from New Hampshire, is the wife of the director and founder of El Roi, a faith-focused humanitarian organization.
U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a briefing on Monday afternoon that the “the safety and security of American citizens overseas is our highest priority.” However, he declined to answers questions about any efforts being made to secure Dorsainvil and her daughter’s release. “We are in regular contact with the Haitian authorities. We’ll continue to work with them and our U.S. government interagency partners, but because it’s an ongoing law enforcement investigation, there’s not more detail I can offer,” Miller said.
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Jean-Junior Joseph, a senior advisor to Ariel Henry, Haiti’s prime minister, said in a WhatsApp message that the matter was being handled by Haitian National Police. “PNH is working on it,” Joseph said, referring to the nation’s law enforcement agency by its French acronym. He had no further details to share.
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Dorsainvil and her child went missing on the same day that the U.S. State Department ordered non-emergency embassy personnel and their families to evacuate Haiti due to a deteriorating security situation that has seen gangs take control of large parts of Port-au-Prince. It also advised all U.S. citizens in Haiti to leave “as soon as possible” because of elevated risks from “kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and poor health care infrastructure.”
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