Mr. Neely, an Army veteran who spent six months at the prison in 2002, sent messages to one of the freed men, Shafiq Rasul, and was astonished when Mr. Rasul replied. Their exchanges sparked a face-to-face meeting, arranged by the BBC, which will be shown on Tuesday. Mr. Neely, who has served as the president of the Houston chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War, says his time at Guantánamo now haunts him, and has granted confessional-style interviews about the abuses he says he witnessed there. In a message to Mr. Rasul, Mr. Neely apologized for his role in the imprisonment.

Gavin Lee, a BBC correspondent, learned about the Facebook messages from Mr. Rasul, who lives in Britain, and thought the situation was incredible. Mr. Lee tracked down Mr. Neely — on Facebook, naturally — and asked, “would you consider meeting face to face?”

“He thought about it and he said, ‘I would love to,’ ” Mr. Lee recalled last week. “I would love to apologize in person.”

This is happening tonight on BBC World News America.

The Associated Press reports that “two U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. was prepared to give Palau up to $200 million in development, budget support and other assistance in return for accepting the Uighurs and as part of a mutual defense and cooperation treaty that is due to be renegotiated this year.”

In an interview with the BBC World Service this morning, Palau President Johnson Toribiong insisted that the only money he’d discussed with the U.S. government was “small support money” to aid in the Uighurs’ resettlement.

For a tiny island of less than 30,000 inhabitants, $200 million would surely be some helpful support. But Toribiong said that was not the motivation: “It’s an act of support for the United States in a request to release these people,” he told the BBC.

In a statement, Toribiong said his tiny country is “honoured and proud” to resettle the detainees, who have been found not to be “enemy combatants.”

Two extensive international polls show the Democratic nominee with far more popular support than Sen. John McCain in a wide array of countries around the world.

One poll, released by the BBC on Tuesday, has Obama with strong leads in all 22 countries surveyed. Kenyans, not surprisingly, are the most supportive of their native son — preferring him to McCain by an 87-5 margin.

Indians are least enthusiastic about Obama; just 24 percent support him, compared to 15 percent for McCain.

Here are the numbers in some of the countries polled:

France: Obama, 69 percent; McCain, 6 percent
Italy: Obama, 72 percent; McCain, 12 percent
Russia: Obama, 18 percent; McCain, 7 percent (no preference, 75 percent)
Brazil: Obama, 51 percent; McCain, 8 percent
China: Obama, 35 percent; McCain, 15 percent
Mexico: Obama, 54 percent; McCain, 16 percent
Indonesia: Obama, 46 percent; McCain, 11 percent
Egypt: Obama, 36 percent; McCain, 13 percent

A strong majority of respondents in most countries say that U.S. relations with the world would improve more under a President Obama than under a President McCain. The one exception is Turkey — where 11 percent anticipate an improvement under Obama, compared to 15 percent under McCain.

Responses vary on whether the election of an African-American would fundamentally change the international perception of the United States. Kenyans say that Obama’s election would achieve this by an 86-11 margin. Poland falls on the opposite extreme — with 60 percent expecting little to no change.

A second poll, conducted in 12 European countries by the German Marshall Fund and released yesterday, finds strikingly similar results. Overall, 69 percent of Europeans support Obama, compared to 26 percent who back McCain.

Many people outside the United States have proposed, not entirely in jest, that because U.S. foreign policy has dramatic effects on the international economic and diplomatic scene, the worldwide populace should get a few electoral votes in the U.S. presidential election.

Unfortunately for Obama, that won’t be happening anytime soon.