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Lawyer for Americans charged in Haiti investigated

Sunday, February 14, 2010
SAN SALVADOR: El Salvador police are probing whether a man representing 10 Americans charged with kidnapping in Haiti is the same person sought in the Central American nation for human trafficking, a statement said Saturday.

El Salvador police said they were working to determine if Jorge Torres Orellana could be Jorge Anibal Torres Puello, who has been presented as a Dominican lawyer for the Americans.

They reopened the case after photos of Puello emerged in international media, the statement said, and police are now comparing them with pictures in their records. The story first emerged in The New York Times.

El Salvador police have posted the photos on their website. "For the moment, we cannot confirm that it is the same person until we finish analyzing fingerprints," the statement said.

The statement added that they were working with Interpol on the case. On Saturday, the international police organization issued a wanted persons alert for Orellana, 32, Interpol said.

It said he was a Salvadoran national accused of running an international sex trafficking ring that lured women and girls from the Caribbean and Central America into prostitution with bogus offers of modeling jobs.

Puello was in Port-au-Prince for one of the Americans' court appearances earlier this week. He did not return a message left for him on Saturday.

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