Ex-Guantanamo Inmates End US Embassy Protest in Uruguay

URUGUAYThe former detainees camped for more than three weeks outside the U.S. embassy, as Obama tries to shut down Guantanamo. Former Guantanamo Bay detainees who camped outside the U.S. embassy in Uruguay’s capital Montevideo for 22 days demanding compensation for their 12-year imprisonment ordeals ended their protest Tuesday after the Latin American country offered guarantees to their welfare.  

Six ex-inmates were resettled in Montevideo in December as U.S. President Barack Obama moved ahead in plans to shut down the notorious detention facility in Cuba. The freed men began their protest outside the embassy April 23, demonstrating against a lack of financial support from their former captors.

Their host country stepped in to resolve their situation, offering them US$560 per month, medical assistance and two years of housing with the possibility of an extension. In return, the men, from Syria, Tunisia and Palestine, must comply with contractual agreements. “They have to learn Spanish, and they have to retrain because they were captured young, before they could develop a career or a profession,” said Christian Adel Mirza, who led negotiations between the former prisoners and the government. The U.S. government recently said that it has “no obligation to provide direct compensation to individuals detained under law of war,” reported Uruguay’s El Pais.

Former President Jose Mujica explained last December that the men were taken in for humanitarian motives: to offer hospitality to human beings who have suffered an atrocious imprisonment in Guantanamo.

Source: teleSUR