Hugo Chavez: Released Gitmo Prisoners Can Come to Venezuela

Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet at 2:58 PM on April 3, 2009.

First he offered aid to the abandoned victims of Hurricane Katrina. Then he offered to cheap oil to America's poor. Now, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has offered to take in prisoners released from Guantanamo Bay.
"We wouldn't have any problem in taking in human beings," Chavez told al-Jazeera Wednesday for a special Arabic edition of his TV program "Aló Presidente." He said that the U.S. military should return the territory occupied by the prison base to Cuba and "finish with that miserable prison."
Famous for his bombast and scathing criticism of George W. Bush, Chavez also expressed his hope that President Barack Obama would become "the last president of the (U.S.) empire."
Unsurprisingly, the Obama administration dismissed Chavez's public overture. ''The United States has not received a formal offer through diplomatic channels to resettle detainees to Venezuela, and is not contemplating resettling detainees to Venezuela,'' Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, told reporters this week.

Political theater or not, the question of where to send the prisoners it releases from Guantanamo presents a major challenge to the Obama administration. Despite his promise to close the prison camp within a year, Obama has not addressed the question of where the remaining 240 or so prisoners will go. Some communities in the U.S. have said that they are willing to accept them -- including a group in Tallahassee, Florida that has volunteered to welcome a group of Chinese Uighur prisoners who would face persecution in China -- but, particularly as it remains unclear how the prisoners will be tried, there's no sign that is close to happening.
"We are committed to ensuring that each of these individuals is addressed through responsible policies that are consistent with the interests of justice and the national security and foreign policy objectives of the United States," Boyd said.
(In other words, don't hold your breath.)
Chavez’s remarks came the same week that Venezuelan-born Miss Universe raved about her recent USO-sponsored trip to Guantanamo. “I didn't want to leave, it was such a relaxing place, so calm and beautiful,” Dayana Mendoza wrote in a blog post, with no sense of irony.

If the beauty queen had any thoughts on the fate of the prisoners there, she did not express them.

Tagged as: venezuela, hugo chavez, guantanamo bay, cuba, al-jazeera, miss universe, dayana mendoza

Liliana Segura is a staff writer and editor of AlterNet's Rights and Liberties and War on Iraq Special Coverage.