The UK government has paid “substantial” compensation to a Guantanamo Bay detainee who was tortured by the CIA and has been imprisoned without charge or trial for two decades, according to his legal team.
Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian born in Saudi Arabia, was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and became the first person subjected to the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques after the September 11 attacks in 2001. The US claimed he was a senior Al Qaeda member, but has since withdrawn that allegation.
According to a US Senate Committee report, his treatment included being waterboarded 83 times, locked in coffin-shaped boxes and assaulted. His ordeal in captivity became the blueprint for brutal US treatment. During the waterboarding, Abu Zubaydah, now 54, became “completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth”, according to the intelligence report.
Former president George W Bush claimed in 2006 that information provided by Abu Zubaydah under the CIA’s programme of “enhanced interrogation” led to the capture of Ramzi Bin Al Shibh, a Yemeni accused of being a key facilitator of the September 11 attacks.
The former president further claimed that the pair provided information that helped in the capture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
UK security services were accused of being complicit in his mistreatment by providing questions to his CIA interrogators while he was held at ‘black sites’ – secret detention facilities around the world outside the US legal system. He was flown to Thailand, Poland, Morocco, Lithuania and Afghanistan for interrogation before he was moved to Guantanamo in 2006.
The UK’s all-party parliamentary intelligence and security committee concluded in 2018, after a four-year inquiry, that MI6 knew about his extreme mistreatment and possible torture.
His lawyers were suing for false imprisonment, negligence and misfeasance in public office. The UK government argued UK law was not applicable in the case and that any claim should be brought in the countries where the alleged torture took place.
Government lawyers argued the UK could not be liable as his personal injuries “were not caused by the posing of questions” and all the “critical conduct” was carried out by the CIA.
The UK Supreme Court rejected the government’s argument in December 2023, enabling Abu Zuybaydah, whose full name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, to bring a civil claim.
Now, a financial settlement has been agreed. The amount has not been disclosed, but Abu Zubaydah’s lawyers say it is “substantial”.
A UK Foreign Office spokesman told The National they would neither confirm nor deny intelligence matters.
“It is important, symbolically and practically, that the UK pays for its role in our client’s torture,” Helen Duffy, Mr Zubaydah’s international counsel told The Guardian, which first reported on the settlement alongside the BBC. “The settlement provides a measure of redress and implicit recognition of our client’s intolerable suffering at the hands of the CIA, enabled by the United Kingdom.”
She called for governments that “share responsibility for his ongoing torture and unlawful detention” to ensure his release.
“These violations of his rights are not historic, they are ongoing,” Ms Duffy said.
