UK pays ‘substantial’ compensation to Palestinian Guantanamo detainee over torture

Dressed in bright orange coveralls, al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners wash before midday prayers at Camp X-Ray, where they are being held, at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. [Photo by J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/AFP via Getty Images

January 12, 2026 

Middle East Monitor 

A Palestinian man who was falsely accused of being a senior Al-Qaeda figure and subjected to years of extreme torture by the CIA has received “substantial” compensation from the UK government in settlement of a case over British complicity in his abuse.

Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian born in Saudi Arabia, has been held without charge or trial at Guantanamo Bay since 2006, after being captured in Pakistan in 2002 at the height of the so-called “war on terror”. US claims that he was a senior member of Al-Qaeda were later withdrawn, with Washington no longer contending that he belonged to the organisation at all.

Despite this, Zubaydah became the first prisoner subjected to the CIA’s notorious “enhanced interrogation” programme, effectively serving as a human experiment for techniques developed after the 11 September 2001 attacks. He has since been widely described as a “forever prisoner”.

The financial settlement follows a legal claim brought by Zubaydah against the UK, arguing that British intelligence services were complicit in his torture. Evidence showed that MI5 and MI6 passed questions to the Central Intelligence Agency for use during his interrogations, despite being aware of the extreme mistreatment he was suffering.

The exact sum paid by the UK government cannot be disclosed for legal reasons, but Zubaydah’s international legal counsel, Professor Helen Duffy, confirmed it was a “substantial amount of money” and that payment is under way.

“The compensation is important, it’s significant, but it’s insufficient,” Duffy said. “These violations of his rights are not historic, they are ongoing.” She urged the UK and other governments that share responsibility for his abuse and continued detention to act to secure his release.

Zubaydah spent four years in a network of secret CIA “black sites” in at least six countries before being transferred to Guantanamo. These sites operated entirely outside any legal framework. Internal CIA assessments concluded early on that he should be cut off from the outside world for the rest of his life.

According to a US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, Zubaydah was subjected to treatment that by UK standards constitutes torture. This included being waterboarded 83 times, forced into coffin-shaped boxes, slammed against walls, deprived of sleep and physically assaulted. He was also kept naked for prolonged periods and exposed to extreme cold. The report described him as a “guinea pig” for interrogation methods that were later used on other detainees.

Internal British intelligence communications revealed that MI6 believed his treatment would have “broken” 98 per cent of US special forces soldiers if they had been subjected to the same abuse. Despite this assessment, it took four years before the UK sought any assurances from the US regarding how he was being treated.

Zubaydah’s capture was initially trumpeted by former US president George W Bush as one of the biggest successes of the war on terror, with claims that he was “plotting and planning murder”. Those assertions have since been formally abandoned by the US government.

A 2018 report by the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee was highly critical of British involvement in Zubaydah’s case, concluding that UK agencies had been aware of the risk of mistreatment and failed to act decisively. The committee also raised questions about other cases, including that of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and whether similar legal liability could arise.