Ex-Guantanamo inmate back in Uruguay after S.Africa deportation

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A former Guantanamo inmate who was resettled in Uruguay has returned to Montevideo after being kicked out of South Africa, Uruguay's foreign minister said Sunday.

The former inmate, Syrian-born Jihad Diyab, landed in Montevideo around midnight Saturday on a flight from Johannesburg, two local TV channels reported.

Uruguayan Foreign Minister Rodolfo Nin Novoa confirmed the TV reports, and said that Diyab "is a free man... he can go where and when he wants."

He also urged reporters to "leave him in peace" so that he can live a normal life.

According to the local media, Diyab - equipped with a Uruguayan passport - traveled to Argentina and Brazil, and then caught a flight to South Africa.

But when he arrived in Johannesburg he was deported because he lacked a visa.

Diyab is one of six former Guantanamo inmates resettled in Uruguay as refugees in 2014, part of a deal with the United States to help close the controversial prison set up in Cuba following the September 11 terror attacks.

Accused of terrorist links, the men -- four Syrians, a Palestinian and a Tunisian -- were never charged or tried. They had been cleared for release but could not be sent to their home countries because of unrest there.

Diyab "did not tell us anything when he left, nor that he had returned," a member of the group supporting the ex-Guantanamo inmates told AFP.

Diyab has said several times that he wanted to leave Uruguay to meet his family elsewhere, stating that he can't make ends meet in Uruguay and that he wasn't adapting to the Spanish-speaking country.