Portugal will take 2 Guantanamo detainees

August 08, 2009|Associated Press

LISBON - Portugal has agreed to take two Syrian detainees from Guantanamo on humanitarian grounds, the government said yesterday - becoming the third EU nation to accept inmates from the US military prison.

The pair will be granted special visas under a law covering humanitarian concerns or national interest, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its website, without elaborating. It did not identify the detainees or say when they might arrive.

President Obama pledged to close the detention center by January and has asked European nations to accept some of the camp’s more than 200 detainees - some of whom cannot return safely to their homelands.

But within the European Union, which long argued for the prison’s closure, only Portugal, France, and Ireland have committed to taking specific prisoners. Outside the bloc, a few former detainees have settled in Albania and Bermuda.

“We are encouraged that so may of our close friends and allies are also considering assisting us in our efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities,’’ US State Department spokesman Robert Wood said yesterday, adding that details of two detainees’ planned transfer to Portugal were still being worked out.

Britain has said it wants to limit its intake of former Guantanamo prisoners to people with citizenship or residency ties. Others, such as Germany and Sweden, say they have taken many refugees from earlier conflicts and expect the United States to explain why it shouldn’t be the first option for all of Guantanamo’s homeless.