© AFP Photo / Rodrigo BuendiaUruguayan President Jose Mujica
In an open letter published on his presidential website, Uruguayan President Jose Mujica called on President Barack Obama release the prisoners at Guantanamo, many who are being held without any charges, saying it would be a humanitarian gesture for "human beings who were suffering an atrocious kidnapping at Guantanamo."
Mujica initially made the offer in March that the South American country would receive the detainees, thus helping Obama fulfill his long-delayed pledge to shutter the facility, which Amnesty International once dubbed, "the Gulag of our times."
Comment: The new National Defense Act does not include the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center.
© AFP Photo / Mladen Antonov / Files
In his "open letter to the Uruguayan people and President Barack Obama," the popular leftist leader called on Washington to end its "unjust and unjustifiable embargo on our sister republic of Cuba."
Comment: Now that Cuba and Russia are increasing ties, the embargo probably won't end any time soon.
He also called upon Washington to release the three members of the so-called "Cuban Five," a group convicted of espionage in 1998, as well as Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar Lopez Rivera.
Mujica, a former guerrilla himself, has said he sympathizes with the ordeal of the 142 prisoners languishing at Guantanamo Bay because of the 13 years he spent as a political prisoner.
every US politician, government official and military officer who ordered, approved or participated in the torture of prisoners in the forever 'war on terror' would be arrested, tried and convicted, and executed by hanging.