UK ‘pays substantial sum’ to tortured Guantánamo Bay detainee | Guantánamo Bay

The UK has settled out of courtroom by paying a “substantial sum” to a Guantánamo Bay detainee who was suing the federal government for its alleged complicity in his rendition and torture, in keeping with the inmate’s authorized group.

Attorneys for Abu Zubaydah have accused the British intelligence providers of offering inquiries to his CIA interrogators to place to him whereas they had been torturing him at a string of CIA “black websites” around the globe the place he was held between 2002 and 2006.

They declare that the case has related classes for the UK immediately, highlighting the authorized and ethical dangers concerned in cooperation with the US at a time it’s violating worldwide regulation.

Abu Zubaydah, whose full identify is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, is a stateless Palestinian who grew up in Saudi Arabia. He was one of many first detainees within the US “warfare on terror” to be tortured, and was subjected to a full vary of what the Bush administration on the time termed “enhanced interrogation methods”, in secret prisons in Thailand, Lithuania, Poland, Afghanistan, Morocco, after which the US base at Guantánamo Bay, on Cuba’s southern coast.

Now 54, he has been held in Guantánamo Bay with out cost ever since, changing into one in every of its “eternally prisoners”.

Abu Zubaydah was first seized in a sweep of suspected militants in Pakistan in March 2002. The US initially claimed he was a high-ranking member of al-Qaida, however has since dropped that declare, and now not alleges that he was even a member of the organisation.

Proof of British complicity surfaced in two UK parliamentary reviews in 2018, which revealed that MI5 and MI6 had fed inquiries to the CIA to ask Abu Zubaydah, within the data that he was being tortured.

The quantity of monetary settlement was not disclosed as a part of the settlement with Abu Zubaydah, however his authorized group described it as “substantial”.

“It will be important, symbolically and virtually, that UK pays for its function in our consumer’s torture,” stated Helen Duffy, his worldwide counsel. “The settlement gives a measure of redress and implicit recognition of our consumer’s insupportable struggling by the hands of the CIA, enabled by the UK.”

The UK supreme courtroom opened the best way for Abu Zuybaydah to carry a civil declare in opposition to the UK authorities in a ruling in December 2023, rejecting authorities claims that his therapy got here beneath the jurisdiction of the nations during which he was held.

In its ruling, the courtroom stated his “involuntary presence in any of the six nations can’t represent a significant reference to that nation”.

The courtroom additionally stated the alleged wrongs “had been dedicated by UK intelligence providers who had been appearing of their official capability within the purported train of powers conferred beneath the regulation of England and Wales”.

In response to a US Senate investigation into the CIA’s use of torture and different inquiries into using torture, Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 instances in a single month, locked for greater than 11 days in a coffin-sized field and left to lie in his personal urine and faeces, stripped bare and crushed, suspended from hooks simply above the ground, and saved awake for seven consecutive days and doused with chilly water at any time when he misplaced consciousness.

In recent times, Abu Zubaydah has revealed a sequence of his personal drawings depicting his therapy at black websites.

The UK’s Overseas, Commonwealth and Improvement Workplace was approached for touch upon the reported settlement. In response to Abu Zubaydah’s legal professionals, the UK made no assertion admitting legal responsibility to accompany the cost.

Duffy referred to as on the federal government to acknowledge and apologise for its function in Abu Zubaydah’s torture, and actively search his launch, and the liberty of different prisoners nonetheless held with out cost in Guantánamo Bay.

“This case is deeply related immediately, as states rise roughshod over worldwide regulation and the world seems to different states to reply,” Duffy stated. “There are vital classes about the price of cooperating with the US or different allies flouting worldwide norms.”