Six prisoners held for 12 years at Guantanamo Bay have been sent to Uruguay to be resettled as refugees, the U.S. government announced on Sunday — a deal that had been delayed for months by security concerns in the Pentagon and political considerations in the South American country.
The six men — four Syrians, a Tunisian and a Palestinian — are the first prisoners transferred to South America from the U.S. base in Cuba, part of a flurry of recent releases amid a renewed push by President Barack Obama to close the prison.
All were detained as suspected militants with ties to al-Qaeda in 2002 but were never charged. They had been cleared for release since at least 2010 but they could not be sent home and languished as the U.S. struggled to find countries willing to take them.
Uruguayan President Jose Mujica agreed to accept the men as a humanitarian gesture and said they would be given help getting established in a country with a small Muslim population.
