Montevideo - Uruguay will treat the six detainees it has taken in from the US camp holding suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay as “totally free men” who do not represent any security threat, the defence minister told Reuters on Monday.
The men were flown to Uruguay for resettlement on Sunday, the latest step in a slow-moving push by US President Barack Obama to close the widely-condemned prison where most detainees have never been charged or tried.
Uruguayan President Jose Mujica accepted a US request to take some inmates from Guantanamo and he has said the men - four Syrians, a Tunisian and a Palestinian - can leave whenever they want or stay as long as they want.
“They will not be restricted in any way. Their status is that of refugees and immigrants,” Uruguayan defence Minister Eleuterio Fernandez Huidobro said in a phone interview.
One of the ex-inmates, Syrian Omar Mahmoud Faraj who was held at Guantanamo for 12 years, thanked Uruguay in an open letter on Monday for helping free him from “that black hole”.
Fernandez Huidobro said the six have all formally requested political asylum and that Uruguay did not fix any conditions on how long they need to stay.
“That said, I am not a lawyer, there could be something that states they cannot (travel freely) but not a condition that Uruguay has imposed or accepted,” he said, adding that Uruguay has located their families and would try to bring them in.
Alka Pradhan, a lawyer for ex-inmate Jihad Diyab, said the US State Department always stipulated travel restrictions for two years when it transferred Guantanamo inmates to other countries but that it was up to Uruguay now to decide whether or not to apply them.
“Neither my client nor any of the six have any plans to leave Uruguay any time soon,” said Pradhan.
Guantanamo was opened by former US President George Bush, after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, to house terrorism suspects rounded up overseas.
Obama promised to shut the prison when he took office nearly six years ago, but has been unable to do so, partly because of obstacles posed by the US Congress.
International rights group Reprieve, which represents several former Guantanamo inmates, says none of the six transferred to Uruguay had ever been charged and all had been cleared for release in 2009/10.
The ex-inmates are undergoing checkups at a medical facility and will then be housed together in Montevideo, the small South American country's capital.
“They will live simply. We don't want them to have to walk around with police, rather with common people, guys who will teach them to drink mate,” he said, referring to a traditional tea Uruguayans drink from a gourd through a metal straw.
Teams of volunteers would show them the country and help them integrate, learn Spanish and find jobs.
A majority of Uruguayans opposed the decision to take in the ex-detainees, but Mujica, a leftist ex-guerrilla who spent 14 years in jail under Uruguay's military dictatorship, pushed ahead on principle, calling Guantanamo a “human disgrace”.
The outgoing president is one of Latin America's most popular leaders due to his blunt style and modest lifestyle.
He has put Uruguay on the global map with radical measures like his decision to take in the Guantanamo inmates and legalise the cultivation, sale and use of marijuana.
In his open letter, Faraj said he and the other five men would show “only good will” to Uruguay and plan to remake their lives there.
“I have no words to express how grateful I am for the immense trust that you, the Uruguayan people, have placed in me and the other prisoners by opening the doors to your country,” he said in the letter sent to newspaper El Pais via his lawyer.
He also said he was a fan of Uruguay's soccer team and looked forward to supporting them.
The path back to a normal life will be hard, the ex-detainees' lawyers say.
Diyab, who spent much of the past two years on hunger strike being force fed, is wheelchair-bound, has sharp back pains he puts down to his treatment at Guantanamo, and has missed out on watching his three children grow up, Pradhan said.
She said he was swept up in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States by groups rounding up Arabs for bounties being offered by Washington.
“He used to own a restaurant ... He's hoping that once he recovers he'll be able to regain his ability to walk and go back into food service.”
Seven other prisoners have been transferred from Guantanamo since early November, including three to the republic of Georgia, two to Slovakia, one to Saudi Arabia and one to Kuwait. The prisoner population is still 136.
Reuters