US News

WikiLeaks: US offered to pay countries to take in Guantanamo inmates

Nov 30, 2010, 17:43 GMT

Madrid - The United States engaged in tough negotiations and promised money in a bid to persuade other countries to receive inmates from its Guantanamo Bay prison camp, according to WikiLeaks documents.

The excerpts from secret US diplomatic documents leaked by the self-proclaimed whistleblower website at the weekend were published by the daily El Pais on Tuesday.

The Kuwaiti interior minister told US officials that the country could not receive its nationals who had been imprisoned at the facility in Cuba, because they were 'rotten,' the documents revealed.

Sheikh Jaber al-Jalid al-Sabah advised Washington to 'get rid of' the Kuwaiti prisoners by abandoning them in an Afghan war zone.

Yemen, meanwhile, said it would receive its citizens if the United States and Saudi Arabia gave it 11 million dollars to create a rehabilitation centre for Muslim extremists.

Washington also found it difficult to persuade its European allies to take Guantanamo prisoners. It promised countries like Spain and Belgium more influence within the European Union, if they cooperated, according to El Pais.

The United States also offered money to several countries. The Pacific archipelago of Kiribati was offered investments worth millions of dollars, if it agreed to take in Chinese Muslim prisoners.

Spain was offered 85,000 dollars for each prisoner it would receive, according to the documents.

El Pais was one of five newspapers to gain access to more than 250,000 secret US documents leaked by WikiLeaks.