URUGUAY/FILE: Uruguay's President Jose Mujica has agreed with the United States to accept some prisoners held in the much-criticized detention centre at the U.S. military base of Guantanamo Bay

Record ID: 351630

  • Title: URUGUAY/FILE: Uruguay's President Jose Mujica has agreed with the United States to accept some prisoners held in the much-criticized detention centre at the U.S. military base of Guantanamo Bay
  • Date: 21st March 2014
  • Summary: GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF U.S. FLAG AS SEEN THROUGH BARBED WIRE AT GUANTANAMO DETENTION CENTRE VARIOUS OF DETENTION CENTRE AS SEEN THROUGH FENCE VARIOUS OF INMATES AS SEEN THROUGH FENCE
  • Embargoed: 5th April 2014 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Cuba, Uruguay
  • City:
  • Country: Cuba Uruguay
  • Topics: Crime,International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVAQIC6LJ2NPXUY8GCYGV7MQXD6
  • Story Text: Uruguay has agreed with the United States to accept some prisoners held in the much-criticized detention centre at the U.S. military base of Guantanamo Bay, President Jose Mujica announced on Thursday (March 20).
    On Friday, Uruguay asked the United States to free Cuban prisoners as a gesture in return for the South American country agreeing to accept detainees from the Guantanamo detention centre.
    The Obama administration, which wants to close the centre used to imprison people captured after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, has been talking to several countries about relocating inmates.
    The South American country had accepted the request by Washington to take some prisoners and would consider them refugees, Mujica told journalists while attending an unrelated farming event on Thursday.

    "No, no, no there is no need to make a big show out of it. It is not any kind of agreement, it is a request and a matter of human rights. There are about 120 people that have been imprisoned for 13 years that have not seen a judge or a lawyer, they haven't seen anyone and the president of the United States wants to get rid of this problem but the senate is demanding certain things so he has asked a number of countries if they can give refuge to any of them and I said yes because I was imprisoned for many years. I'm sick of them talking human rights, human rights is this. If they want to make a home and work in the country let them stay in the country," Mujica said.

    "They are coming as refugees and Uruguay will give them a place. If they want to bring their whole family and everything, it's that simple," he added.
    Weekly newspaper Busqueda reported that Uruguay had accepted a U.S. proposal to take five detainees from the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba base for two years. The 78-year-old ex-guerrilla Mujica agreed after speaking to Cuban President Raul Castro and sending delegates to visit the detention centre, the report said.
    Guantanamo has been criticized by human rights groups, with some of its prisoners held for a decade or longer without being charged or given a trial. Opened by President George W. Bush in 2002 to hold terrorism suspects rounded up overseas, Guantanamo became a symbol of the excesses of his "war on terror."
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