The British government has paid "significant" compensation to a man who was tortured by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and who remains imprisoned without trial at Guantanamo Bay after almost 20 years, the BBC reports.
Abu Zubaydah was the first person subjected to the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" techniques after the September 11, 2001 attacks. He was alleged to have been a senior member of al-Qaeda. The US government later retracted that claim.
MI5 and MI6 passed questions to the CIA for use during Zubaydah's interrogation, even though they knew about his extreme abuse, the BBC reports.
He filed a lawsuit against the United Kingdom, claiming that its intelligence services were “complicit” in his torture.
The case has now been concluded with a financial settlement.
Professor Helen Duffy, international legal advisor to Abu Zubaydah, said: “Compensation is important, it is significant, but it is insufficient.”
She called on the United Kingdom and other governments that “share responsibility for his continued torture and unlawful detention” to secure his release.
"These violations of his rights are not a thing of the past, they continue."
The Foreign Office, which oversees MI6, said it would not comment on intelligence matters, the BBC reports.
The exact amount Zubejda will receive cannot be made public for legal reasons, Dafi said. However, it is a "significant sum of money," and the payment is ongoing.
She added that he currently does not have the ability to access that money himself.
Dominic Grieve, who chaired the parliamentary inquiry into Zubeida's case, said the financial settlement was a "highly unusual" situation, but that what happened to Zubeida was "undoubtedly" wrong.
Zubaydah, a Palestinian born in Saudi Arabia, has been held in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2006, without charge or conviction.
He is one of 15 prisoners still held there, despite numerous convictions and official reports detailing his abuse.
He is often called the "eternal prisoner".
Zubaydah was first captured by the United States in Pakistan in 2002, after which he was held for four years in a series of CIA "black sites" in six countries, including Lithuania and Poland.
"Black sites" were secret detention facilities around the world, outside the American legal system. Zubaydah was the first person to be detained in one.
After the CIA took custody of Zubaydah, its officers concluded that he should be completely cut off from the outside world for the rest of his life.
An internal MI6 memo shows that the agency believed that the treatment he was subjected to would have “broken” 98 percent of American special forces soldiers if they had been subjected to it. Despite this, four years passed before British intelligence sought any assurances about his treatment in custody.
Zubeida's arrest was hailed as one of the biggest in the so-called war on terror.
President George W. Bush personally announced his arrest, claiming that he was a senior al-Qaeda operative who had “planned and prepared assassinations.” These claims were later retracted by the US government, which no longer considers him to have been a member of al-Qaeda.
He was described as a "guinea pig" for the highly controversial interrogation techniques used by the CIA after September 11, 2001.
According to a report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee on the CIA's detention and interrogation program, Zubaydah was routinely subjected to treatment that would be considered torture by British standards, including 83 waterboardings, confinement in coffin-shaped crates, and physical assaults.
Duffy said that British intelligence services "created a market" for such torture, sending specific questions to him during interrogations.
The Senate report was highly critical of the way Zubaydah was treated, as was a 2018 report by the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee.
The parliamentary committee also criticised MI5 and MI6 for their conduct in relation to the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, questioning whether he could also take similar legal action.
Neither the government nor Muhammad's lawyers would comment to the BBC on whether such a case had been initiated or ended in a settlement.
Grieve said the UK had evidence that "the Americans had behaved in a way that should have raised serious concerns".
"We should have opened it up with the United States and, if necessary, suspended cooperation, but we failed to do so for a significant period," he added.
Dafi said that Zubejda is eager to secure his freedom and start a new life.
"I hope that the payment of these significant funds will enable him to do so and to support himself when he is released."
However, she stressed that this would depend on whether the US and its allies would secure his release.
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