Abu Zubaydah, a Guantanamo Bay prisoner who has been detained for almost 20 years without trial and was brutally tortured by the CIA, has received “substantial” compensation from the UK government.
MI5 and MI6 had passed questions to the CIA to use during Abu Zubaydah’s interrogations, with full knowledge of his extreme mistreatment, which included waterboarding, physical and sexual assault, and putting him in a coffin alive.
Internal MI6 messages show how his treatment would have “broken” 98% of U.S. special forces soldiers if they had been subjected to it. Despite this, they still played a part in facilitating his torture.
According to the BBC, Zubaydah brought a legal claim against the UK on the basis that its intelligence services were “complicit” in his torture, thus leading to him gaining a “substantial” compensation after the case reached a financial settlement.
The 54 year old was the first man to be subjected to dehumanising torture techniques, which the CIA labelled “enhanced interrogation.” The US government had previously claimed that Zubaydah was a senior al-Qaeda member, but later withdrew the allegation.
He has been held in the U.S.-run prison in Cuba since 2006, despite never being charged or convicted of a crime. Abu Zubaydah also claims that the UK was complicit in his torture by the CIA.
Abu Zubaydah’s capture
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Abu Zubaydah, whose real name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, but is of Palestinian origin. According to CAGE Senior Director and former Guantanamo Bay prisoner, Moazzam Begg, he grew up in Ramallah, Palestine, where he resisted the Israeli occupation by “throwing stones at occupation tanks.”
He was first captured in Faisalabad, Pakistan, by U.S. forces in 2002 along with more than 30 other suspects after it was alleged that he was a senior Al Qaeda member in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, an allegation that would later be dropped.
Following his arrest in Pakistan, Abu Zubaydah was then taken into the CIA detention programme, eventually finding himself imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay after four years of imprisonment across a series of CIA “black sites” in six countries, including Thailand, Lithuania and Poland.
“Black sites” are secret detention facilities around the world which fall outside the U.S. legal system.
Torture techniques
Almost immediately upon his capture, the CIA began to discuss how they could employ certain forms of torture in his interrogation, as described in CIA records cited by the SSCI report.
In Abu Zubaydah’s own drawings from his prison cell, he depicted different methods of torture that he was subjected to, such as waterboarding, among other methods which qualify as human rights abuses.
CAGE Senior Director Moazzam Begg said: “They waterboarded him, they abused him, they put him in a coffin alive, they physically and sexually assaulted him.”
A U.S. Senate Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA detention and interrogation programme described how Abu Zubaydah was routinely subjected to treatment that by UK standards would be considered torture, including being waterboarded 83 times, locked in coffin-shaped boxes, and physically assaulted.
Abu Zubaydah’s legal case
Prof Helen Duffy, the international legal counsel for Zubaydah, said: “These violations of his rights are not historic, they are ongoing.
“The compensation is important, it’s significant, but it’s insufficient,” Duffy said, as she urged the UK and other governments to “share responsibility for his ongoing torture and unlawful detention.”
The exact amount Zubaydah will receive via compensation has not been revealed due to legal reasons, but Duffy described it as a “substantial amount of money,” adding that Abu Zubaydah is currently unable to access the money himself.
He is one of 15 prisoners who are still held in the infamous Guantanamo Bay, known for holding individuals the U.S. deems as terrorism suspects and “illegal enemy combatants,” as 2002 US President George W. Bush stated upon his establishment of the detention camp.
Dubbed the “forever prisoner” due to his seemingly unending detention without trial, Abu Zubaydah was hailed as one of the biggest captures of the U.S.’s so-called “war on terror.”
President George W. Bush had personally publicised the capture, claiming he was a senior Al-Qaeda operative who was “plotting and planning murder.”
Abu Zubaydah has also been described as a “guinea pig” due to the testing of brutal torturous “interrogation techniques” which the CIA employed in the aftermath of 9/11.
Duffy said Zubaydah was looking forward to gaining freedom and building a new life.
“I am hopeful that the payment of the substantial sums will enable him to do that and to support himself when he’s in the outside world.”
