Ex-Guantanamo Inmates Leave Hospital in Uruguay

Six former Guantanamo inmates being resettled in Uruguay have left hospital and been taken to a house where they will adjust to their new lives in South America, the labor union hosting them said Thursday.

"Now they will begin as normal a life as possible," said Fernando Gambera of national labor union federation PIT-CNT, which is providing the house in the capital Montevideo where the men -- four Syrians, a Palestinian and a Tunisian -- will live during an initial transition phase.

The former inmates had been in a military hospital since their arrival Sunday as part of a deal between the Uruguayan and U.S. governments aimed at helping President Barack Obama fulfill his long-delayed promise to close the prison set up in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

The men will take Spanish classes and receive professional training at their new house, a temporary residence until they settle elsewhere along with their families, union leaders say.

The former inmates have been kept under tight security, a measure the Uruguayan interior minister has said is for their own safety.

The men, all in their 30s and 40s, were among the first detainees sent to Guantanamo in 2002.

Detained as part of the U.S. "War on Terror" for alleged links to al-Qaida, they were never charged or tried.

They had been cleared for release, but the United States ruled they could not be sent to their home countries for security reasons.

Uruguay's President Jose Mujica, a former leftist guerrilla who leaves office in March, has said he agreed to take in the inmates in part because he sympathized with their plight as a one-time political prisoner who himself spent 13 years in jail.