A US private aid worker has been arrested in Haiti on charges of kidnapping a child whose parents did not believe it had died, his organization said Thursday.
The Materials Management Relief Corps (MMRC), a nonprofit corporation that started providing aid to Haiti after the January earthquake, said on its website that the man in question, Paul Waggoner, was arrested on Sunday after he returned to Haiti to continue the group's work, DPA reported.
MMRC also acknowledged that Waggoner has a criminal record in the US. A newspaper on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, where Waggoner once lived, reported that he had a long crime record that included kidnapping, assault and battery.
The child died in February when Waggoner was working at the Haitian Community Hospital in Petionville organizing supplies, MMRC said.
Waggoner apparently fled Haiti when questions were raised about the child, but returned recently thinking the issue had been resolved, MMRC said.
The group said that a US physician signed an affidavit testifying that the child had died and that the father refused to take the body because he could not dispose of it.
In the chaos after Haiti's massive earthquake, tension rose over US aid and religious organizations which wanted to evacuate orphans for adoption in the US.
US aid worker arrested in Haiti for kidnapping; has US crime record
A US private aid worker has been arrested in Haiti on charges of kidnapping a child whose parents did not believe it had died, his organization said Thursday.
