(MENAFN- Arab News) MONTEVIDEO: Former Guantanamo Bay detainee Adel bin Muhammad El-Ouerghi looked out of his apartment window and smiled as he showed off his wedding ring to a handful of cheering onlookers below.
The 50-year-old Tunisian married Roma Blanco a 24-year-old Uruguayan who converted to Islam. The union was the first of two weddings being organized by men resettled in the South American country.
'Adel is humble respectful nice and very gentlemanly' Blanco said. 'He is everything that a woman can expect from a man.'
Blanco added that she liked her husband's sincerity and how he treated her 5-year-old son from a previous relationship.
She said she converted to Islam four months ago and planned to take the name Samira. She and El-Ouerghi met a month ago at a mosque. Blanco wore a light purple scarf and a violet jacket with gold-colored lacing. She also had henna designs on her hands.
The wedding took place in the two-bedroom apartment where the couple plans to live. Samir Selim an imam and director of the Egyptian Islamic Center in Montevideo officiated at the ceremony.
Irina Posadas another Uruguayan woman who converted to Islam told the AP that she and 34-year-old husband-to-be Omar Abdelhadi Faraj from Syria plan to wed this week.
'I believe in Islam and I'm going to marry (by the rules of) Islam' she said. Posadas who began presenting herself as Fatima after converting to Islam a year and a half ago said she met Faraj in February. Posadas a Chinese teacher who wouldn't give her age would go to the house where the men were living to help them with Spanish.
The native Uruguayan said she lived in Taiwan 26 years and has a child from a previous relationship.
'Omar is very intelligent and a good communicator' she said. 'I don't want him to be seen as a former prisoner but rather a regular person.'
El Ouerghi told the AP in February that he had been married to a Pakistani woman while living in Afghanistan. He said she divorced him when he was in Guantanamo.
Roma said she was not interested in El Ouerghi's past before Guantanamo or during his time there. 'I know that he was tortured but I haven't wanted to dig in his wounds' she said. 'I've told him that when he wants to he can tell me about and he has said he would.'
The two men and four other former detainees were resettled in Uruguay in December after spending nearly 13 years in Guantanamo. All were detained in Afghanistan in 2002 with alleged ties to Al-Qaeda. The men were never tried or convicted and the US government decided to release them. They were invited to resettle in Uruguay as a humanitarian gesture by former President Jose Mujica himself a prisoner for 13 years.