London-based NGO Reprieve, which advocates the rights of prisoners, has praised Georgia for accepting three former Guantanamo detainees who arrived in the country on Tuesday.

“Reprieve would like to thank Georgia for offering homes to three Guantanamo refugees,” said Reprieve executive director Clare Algar. “I sincerely hope that Georgia’s exceptional hospitality inspires more European countries to follow suit.”
 

Georgia on Tuesday received the first group of detainees from Guantanamo, the prison in Cuba where the United States has kept people suspected of being involved in terrorist activities.
 

The US has been transferring prisoners to a number of European countries in the past months in an effort to close down the much-criticised prison. US President Barack Obama has not succeeded in fulfilling his pledge to shut the facilities by January this year, as many countries have been reluctant to accept former Guantanamo prisoners.
 

Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said the three people who arrived Tuesday were “from Middle Eastern countries.”
 

"They will be free, they will live like normal citizens and they will have permanent contacts with their families," Utiashvili said as quoted by AFP.
 

Georgian National Security Council chief Eka Tkeshelashvili said Tbilisi agreed to accept the inmates as part of its efforts to build stronger ties with Washington. "From the beginning when there was a call for cooperation we started negotiations because we wanted to help out," she told AFP.
 

Pauley Rossdale, who is responsible for Reprieve’s ‘Life After Guantanamo’ project, aims to work with local partner NGOs and host governments “to ensure that appropriate care and support are in place for the men in terms of medical needs, social support, financial assistance etc.”
 

Rossdale pointed out that there are “obvious challenges for men who have been released from up to eight years of detention in Guantanamo with no charge or trial, “ stressing that they will need support to rebuild their live and integrate into society.
 

“We have every reason to believe that Georgians have accepted these men because they intend to do exactly that,” she said.