UN to house former Guantanamo inmates: Uruguay
Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez says the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will provide homes for the six men formerly held at the US-run Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.
The UNHCR has “the necessary resources to attend to the needs of the (former) prisoners,” Vázquez said on Friday after a meeting with US President Barack Obama at the Summit of the Americas in Panama City, adding “Each one of them will have a home.”
The four Syrians, one Tunisian and one Palestinian were held in the notorious detention camp for more than a decade over their alleged links with the al-Qaeda terrorist group, but they were never charged or tried.
The six were freed from the infamous prison in December last year. Uruguay accepted the ex-detainees as refugees, saying the decision was out of respect for human rights.
Former Guantanamo inmates (From L) Abd al Hadi Omar Mahmoud Faraj, Ali Husein Shaaban and Ahmed Adnan Ahjam walk in a street in the Uruguayan capital city of Montevideo, December 12, 2014. © AFP
The Guantanamo Bay detention facility was set up after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center complex in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington D.C.
Washington says the prisoners are terror suspects, but has not pressed charges against most of them in any court.
The US military has been criticized for force-feeding Guantanamo prisoners who have been engaged in hunger strikes for years to protest their confinement.
Despite Obama’s promise to close the prison due to its damage to the US reputation, it remains open with more than 120 detainees, many of them without charge or trial.
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