Uruguay: ex-Guantanamo detainee travelled legally to Brazil

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay – A former Guantanamo Bay detainee who was resettled in Uruguay has travelled legally to neighbouring Brazil, authorities said Friday, rejecting news reports that he violated his refugee status.

Christian Mirza, Uruguayan government’s representative for six ex-detainees resettled in Montevideo, told The Associated Press that news reports mischaracterized Abu Wa’el Dhiab’s trip.

“To say that he fled the country is incorrect because he had the right to go,” said Mirza.

Mirza did not disclose where in Brazil or when Dhiab travelled.

Dhiab travelled last year to neighbouring Argentina, which like Uruguay is part of the trade bloc Mercosur. In general, residents of Mercosur are allowed to travel between member countries with only a national identification card.

The six former detainees — Dhiab and three other Syrians, one Tunisian and one Palestinian — were settled in Uruguay in late 2014. Then-President Jose Mujica invited them as a humanitarian gesture as U.S. President Barack Obama tries to shut the Guantanamo prison.

Questions about whether the men are allowed to leave Uruguay have periodically popped up, but Interior Minister Eduardo Bonomi said there were no such limits.

“When the conditions for their arrival were being negotiated, the United States proposed that Uruguay make sure they stay in the country for two years,” Bonomi told reporters in Montevideo. “Uruguay did not accept that condition.”

The resettlement has been fraught with problems. The men initially complained publicly that they were not getting enough government help, but also refused to get jobs, which angered many Uruguayans.

Dhiab, who is frail and walks with crutches as the result of health problems related to periodic hunger strikes he undertook in Guantanamo, has been one of the most vocal critics of Uruguay’s resettlement program. He even went so far as to say that detainees should not accept being resettled in Uruguay.

Two of the other men married local women who converted to Islam, but the unions quickly dissolved amid allegations of domestic abuse.