Hugo Chavez: Released Gitmo Prisoners Can Come to Venezuela

Alternet.org
April 03, 2009Human Rights

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.

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