UK Pays “Forever Prisoner” Abu Zubaydah Compensation for Torture

The United Kingdom has agreed to pay “substantial” financial compensation to “forever prisoner” Abu Zubaydah for the torture that he endured at the hands of the US national-security state.  Abu Zubaydah has been a prisoner for over 20 years without charge or trial at various gulags such as Gitmo and CIA black sites.

The US regime originally alleged that Abu Zubaydah was the third or fourth most senior leader in Al Qaeda and decided to torture him, despite the fact that torture is illegal and is known to produce false and unreliable information.  Now, the regime acknowledges that Abu Zubaydah was never a member of Al Qaeda and had no involvement in the 9/11 attacks yet refuses to release him from Gitmo.

British intelligence services were complicit in the torture of Abu Zubaydah by giving questions to the CIA for use during interrogations, when the British knew that the CIA was torturing him.  For example, Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times.  Additionally, he was put into coffin-shaped boxes, slammed against walls, deprived of sleep, and physically assaulted.  Abu Zubaydah was also a used as a “guinea pig” for the interrogation methods that were subsequently used on other detainees.

Adherence to the rule of law requires the immediate release of Abu Zubaydah from Gitmo.  War criminals such as George W. Bush, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, lawyers John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee who authored the “torture memos”, and psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen who developed the torture program must be prosecuted and convicted for the horrific war crimes that they authorized and implemented.