President Obama is looking for ways to empty 154 detainees from Guantanamo Bay and he just found a taker for five of them: Uruguay.
“The U.S. president wants to solve this problem so he’s asking several countries to host them and I told him I will,” President Jose Mujica told local media Thursday, BBC reported. “They are welcome to come here.”
Mr. Mujica, who once spent 15 years in a military prison, said he was accepting the request for “human rights reasons,” BBC reported.
The news of Uruguay’s willingness to take Gitmo detainees comes just as reports surfaced that an accused bodyguard of killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Ali Ahmad Razihi, may be heading to Yemen.
Lawyers for the U.S. military would not yet confirm to the Los Angeles Times whether or not that was true.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.