Ex-Guantanamo Inmates End U.S. Embassy Protest in Uruguay
Former Guantanamo inmates who have been resettled in Uruguay ended a three-week protest outside the U.S. embassy Tuesday after reaching a deal with the South American country's government for economic support.
Six ex-detainees were released from the U.S. military prison last December and sent to Uruguay as refugees, but four of them launched a protest in April, complaining they were suffering severe financial hardship.
They set up tents outside the American embassy in Montevideo and camped out there for more than three weeks, accusing the United States of washing its hands of them after more than a decade in prison without charge.
Under the deal they signed with the Uruguayan government, they will receive $560 a month, an amount they had already been promised as refugees, but which they allege sometimes failed to arrive on time.
They will also receive medical care, help finding work, Spanish classes and rent payments, enabling them to leave the communal apartment where they have been living -- which was provided by a labor union -- and get housing of their own.
The deal will be funded by the Uruguayan foreign ministry and monitored by the local office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
The United States was not involved in the deal, said Christian Mirza, the Uruguayan government's representative in the negotiations.
The former inmates "have full rights to demand compensation from the United States, but they will have to use their own means to do so," he said.
The parties signed one version of the deal in Spanish and another in Arabic. It covers the men for two years and can be extended for a third, said sources close to the negotiations.
The men are Syrian nationals Abdelhadi Faraj, Ahmed Adnan Ahjam, and Ali Husein Shaaban and Tunisian Abdul bin Muhammad Abbas Ouerghi.
Palestinian Mohammed Tahamatan did not take part in the protest and had already accepted the conditions offered by the Uruguayan government.
The sixth inmate resettled in Uruguay, Syrian national Jihad Diyab, did not sign the deal because he plans to leave the country soon, said Mirza.
The six men were among the first prisoners sent to Guantanamo in 2002.
Detained as part of the U.S. "war on terror" for alleged links to al-Qaida, they were never charged or tried.
They had been cleared for release, but the U.S. ruled they could not be sent to their home countries for security reasons.
Uruguay's former president Jose Mujica agreed to take them in to help U.S. President Barack Obama fulfill his long-delayed promise to close the Guantanamo prison.
Mirza said the International Committee of the Red Cross is searching for the resettled detainees' families and will pay for them to join them when they are found.
Source: Agence France Presse
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