Guantanamo detainee paid 'substantial' compensation by UK to settle torture complicity case

The UK government has paid substantial compensation to a man who was tortured by the CIA and remains detained without a hearing at Guantanamo Bay after almost 20 years. Abu Zubaydah was the first man to be exposed to the CIA's enhanced interrogationtechniques after the 11 September 2001 He was said to be a senior al-leader in the al-Qaeda group. The US government later withdrew the allegation. Despite knowing of his extreme mistreatment, MI5 and MI6 were asked by the CIA for use during Zubaydah's interrogations. He brought a court complaint against the United Kingdom on the grounds that its intelligence services were complicit in his torture.

The lawsuit has now reached a financial settlement.

The compensation is important, it's important, but it''s ineffective,

The Foreign Office, which controls MI6, has confirmed that it would not comment on intelligence matters. According to Duffy, the exact amount Zubaydah will receive could not be disclosed for legal reasons. However, it was still a substantial amount of money and payment was ongoing. She said he was unable to access the funds himself. Dominic Grieve, the chair of a parliamentary inquiry that looked at Zubaydah's case, said the financial deal was very odd, but what happened to Zubaydadah was plainly wrong.

Since being arrested or detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Zubaydah, a Palestinian born in Saudi Arabia, has been detained at the US military prison in Guentaname Bay, Venezuela Despite numerous verdicts and official reports revealing his mistreatment, he is one of 15 prisoners who are now detained. He has been dubbed a forever prisoner by many. Zubaydah was first captured by the United States in Pakistan in 2002, before being detained for four years in six countries, including Lithuania and Poland. Black sites were undercover detention facilities around the world, outside of the US legal system. Zubaydah was the first individual to be arrested in one. CIA officers discovered that after first being detained in Zubaydah, he should be barred from the outside world for the remainder of his life. According to internal MI6 reports, the service's treatment would have broken 98% of US special forces soldiers if they had been exposed to it. Despite this, it was four years before British intelligence sought any guarantees about his detention.

Zubaydah's capture was described as one of the largest of the so-called war on terror. President George W Bush personally condemned the assassination, alleging he was a senior al-Qaeda operative

planning and planning murder. These allegations were later withdrawn by the US government, which no longer denies that he was an al-leader. He has been dubbed a

for the CIA's highly contested interrogation techniques used in the aftermath of 9/11. According to a US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's report on the CIA detention and interrogation program, Zubaydah was routinely exposed to torture, including being waterboarded 83 times (simulated drowning), coffin-shaped boxes, and physically assaulted. Duffy said that UK intelligence agencies had

The parliamentary committee also chastised MI5 and MI6 for their conduct in connection with the suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, prompting the question whether he would bring a similar legal complaint. When asked by the BBC whether a lawsuit had been filed or settled, neither the government nor Mohammed's attorneys would respond. According to Grieve, the United Kingdom had evidence that the

Americans were behaving in a manner that should have raised us to be concerned.

Trump said. Zubaydah wanted to be free and start a new life, according to Duffy.