The 4 most interesting things about the freed Guantanamo prisoners in Uruguay

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay — It’s been a week since six former detainees of the Guantanamo Bay military prison arrived in Uruguay, and we’ve started to learn a few things about their past, present and future.

In interviews with attorneys for three of the freed prisoners, GlobalPost has gleaned some interesting nuggets about the four Syrians, one Tunisian and one Palestinian who were held for more than a decade in Guantanamo without ever facing charges and are now starting a new life in this small South American country.

Here are four of the most interesting things we’ve learned:

1. The detainees are planning to stay in Uruguay — at least for now

Ali Hussein al Shaaban, a 32-year-old Syrian who had been imprisoned at Guantanamo since 2002, is delighted to be in Uruguay, his lawyer Michael Mone, Jr., told GlobalPost last week.

“He’s so grateful to the people of Uruguay and President [Jose] Mujica for giving him refuge,” Mone said.

Uruguayan officials have said the former detainees can stay in the country as long as they wish. They’re welcome to find jobs, and bring their families to this small South American country if they want to, officials said. Mone said his client hasn’t yet really thought much about the future, but that he’s not planning on going anywhere for the time being.

“I think he’s ready to put down roots here, as Mujica suggested,” Mone said.

Cori Crider, a London-based attorney who represents Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a 43-year-old Lebanon-born Syrian, said her client and the other detainees plan to apply for identification documents as soon as they’ve settled down in their new home. She added in an interview Friday that Dhiab has already applied for the Uruguay equivalent of a national ID card, called a “Cedula.”

“I honestly don’t know if they’re on the path to citizenship,” Crider said. “But certainly permanent legal residency.”

Mujica has said the arrivals from Guantanamo are free to leave Uruguay as soon as they want to. But that could be tricky without passports. So it looks like the six men are in Uruguay for at least the near future.

The McClatchy news service reported in 2013 that two former Guantanamo prisoners who were transferred to El Salvador in 2012 “quietly slipped out” of the country less than a year and a half after arriving.

2. While they’re in Uruguay, the former prisoners are working on assimilating

Mone said his client al Shaaban has been “practicing his Spanish” for the last few months since he learned he would be transferred to a Spanish-speaking country.

Crider said the same about Dhiab, and added that her client also sought to embrace another local Uruguayan custom: drinking yerba mate.

Mate, a hot herbal infusion drunk out of a hollowed-out gourd using a metal straw, is ubiquitous in some South American countries. Crider said Dhiab tried to sneak a sip of a Uruguayan official’s mate last week and surprised his lawyer by saying the bitter drink was popular in Syria.

GlobalPost already knew this. As we reported in 2012, Syria is the world’s top importer of yerba mate, which returning Syrian migrants brought back to the Middle East in the 19th century.

As we outlined in this story Monday, Dhiab has spent most of the last two years on hunger strike, and was force-fed while at Guantanamo Bay. Crider said he’s still emaciated and unwell, and is under doctor’s orders to avoid certain food and drink.

“He said ‘I used to drink mate three or four times a day.’ He loves it.” Crider said. “But the doctor wagged her finger and said ‘not til you get better.”

3. Their arrival in Uruguay was shrouded in secrecy, and pretty gnarly

In a week when a Senate investigation released a damning report about torture by the CIA and media attention was again focused on Guantanamo, the Department of Defense seemingly did little to make the prisoners’ transition to Uruguay easy or comfortable.

Crider, who has represented several released Guantanamo inmates, said the Uruguayan release, like all the others, was kept a secret from her and other attorneys.

She also said Dhiab, who has never been charged with a crime, was transported by plane from Cuba shackled, blindfolded and wearing earmuffs, in much the same way he arrived at the prison 12 years ago. He was so weak when he arrived in Uruguay that he had to be helped down the stairs of the plane, she said.

This treatment of Dhiab didn’t surprise Crider, who said her organization had sent mango juice to their client in his final weeks in Guantanamo, to help him transition off his hunger strike. The mango juice was confiscated, she said.

The Department of Defense also refused to send Dhiab’s attorneys copies of blood test results and other medical data that would have been useful in his transition to freedom, Crider said.

“It’s just like throwing acid on your sense of self,” she said. “Everyone who comes out is going to have a long road to recovery.”

4. They haven’t met legendary Uruguayan President ‘Pepe’ Mujica yet

There’s been a lot of attention in the media about Mujica’s personal history as a political prisoner. Like the detainees, Mujica spent more than a decade in prison, many of those years in isolation, and the charismatic outgoing president has made much of his shared experiences with the detainees as reasoning to offer them refuge.

In an open letter to President Barack Obama published on the presidential website earlier this month, Mujica urged Obama to end the “atrocious kidnapping “ of the prisoners and transition them to Uruguay as soon as possible.

But, as of Friday, Mujica had yet to meet with the six men.

Crider said she was working to set up a meeting with Mujica, and added that several of the other senior officials have also had similar experiences with imprisonment (a few other government ministers are, like Mujica, former members of the Tupumaro guerrilla group) and had offered advice and consolation to her client.

“We’ve had many clients resettled in many countries, and in all sincerity, I have never seen the kind of level of warmth and compassion and understanding of the particular problems that Guantanamo creates,” she said.