Guantanamo prisoner in standoff as transfer stalls

[unhappycamper]

http://hamptonroads.com/2014/09/guantanamo-prisoner-standoff-transfer-stalls

Guantanamo prisoner in standoff as transfer stalls
By Ben Fox
The Associated Press
© September 9, 2014

MIAMI

At about 155 pounds, the Syrian prisoner is gaunt for a man over 6 feet tall. He is pale and weak, so lethargic at times that one of his lawyers said he had to lie on the floor when he met with her one day this summer at the prison on the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The hunger strike that 43-year-old Abu Wa'el Dhiab started 18 months ago to protest his indefinite confinement without charge was supposed to be over by now. He was told in the spring he would be resettled in Uruguay, along with five other Guantanamo prisoners. But as the months have dragged on and the transfer put on hold, his standoff with military officials has only deteriorated, at times turning violent.

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In July, the Pentagon gave Congress a legally required 30-day notice that it intended to transfer Dhiab and five other Guantanamo prisoners — three other Syrians, a Tunisian and a Palestinian — to Uruguay, where President Jose Mujica, a leftist former political prisoner, offered to accept them as a humanitarian gesture. The other prisoners have kept a much lower profile at Guantanamo than Dhiab so little is known about them. But they are among the several dozen prisoners who cannot return to their homelands because they would face persecution or because their own countries are considered unstable.

The transfer to Uruguay, where one poll shows it is opposed by a majority, however, is not imminent. Presidential spokesman Diego Canepa announced last week that aspects of the transfer were still being finalized and that it would be unlikely within the next two to three months. That would put it past Uruguay's Oct. 26 presidential and legislative elections, and perhaps even a possible Nov. 30 runoff.