MONTEVIDEO, (Reuters) – Uruguay has agreed with the United States to accept some prisoners held in the much-criticized detention center at the U.S. military base of Guantanamo Bay, President Jose Mujica said yesterday.
The Obama administration, which wants to close the center 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.
“It’s a request for human rights reasons,” Mujica said.
Mujica said Obama “has asked a bunch of countries if they can take some and I told him yes.”
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 center, the report said.