Brussels, 08/07/2010 (Agence Europe) - Germany is to take two detainees from the US Guantanamo prison camp, but not one more, German Home Affairs Minister Thomas de Maizière announced on Wednesday 7 July. He said that the two prisoners, a Palestinian and a Syrian, who have been held for almost nine years do not represent any threat to Germany. The minister pointed out that neither man had been accused of any crime, either in the United States, or in their country of origin, or in Germany. Washington had asked Berlin to take a third detainee being released. De Maizière said that this was “impossible”, indicating that he could not be certain that this third individual would not represent a danger to security in Germany. The Rhineland-Palatinate, in the west of the country, will host one of the former detainees and Hamburg, in the north of Germany, the other. The German section of the NGO Amnesty International hailed the German decision as a “contribution to ending this human rights scandal”. With the arrival of the two on German soil, Europe will have taken some 21 former detainees. At the start of May, the Guantanamo prison camp still held 181 detainees, out of the 240 when Barack Obama took office at the start of 2009. (B.C./transl.rt)