U.S. asked Colombia to shelter Gitmo detainees, chancellor says

Colombia’s foreign minister, María Ángela Holguín, last week acknowledged that the U.S. government had asked the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos to accept inmates from the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo, Cuba.

She did not say how many inmates Washington had proposed, or who made the request or when, but said that “no answer on the subject has been given.”

“We listened attentively to the request from the United States [but] we haven’t moved forward at all with them on that matter,” she said at a press briefing in Bogotá. “They made the request, we have not given an answer on that subject and have not analyzed it.”

The Uruguayan weekly Búsqueda on Thursday said that Colombia and Brazil had been approached by the Obama administration and “are evaluating whether to give refuge” to some inmates. Uruguay has already agreed to accept at least five or six. (For background, click here.)

Neither the U.S. State Department nor the White House have issued any official statement so far about Uruguay’s willingness to shelter some detainees.

Holguín said that Washington is reaching to other countries for assistance “because they need somehow to find a place where the Guantánamo detainees can go on with their lives.”