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Britain to Pay Compensation to Guantanamo Detainees

16 November 2010 23:27 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. The British government is expected to announce Tuesday that it will pay millions of dollars in compensation to a group of former Guantanamo Bay detainees, APA reports quoting â€œThe Voice of Americaâ€.

The group is suing the British government, accusing it of complicity in their alleged torture overseas.

Prime Minister David Cameron’s office said details of the settlement would be presented to parliament later Tuesday.

The government is expected to say it is in the national interest that the cases not be brought to court, in order to protect the security services and their methods from public scrutiny.

The settlement decision follows weeks of negotiations with lawyers for the former prisoners. Britain’s ITV News says at least seven detainees will receive payments, with one man receiving about $1.6 million.

It is widely thought that British agents did not themselves participate in the torture of detainees either in Afghanistan or Iraq. But the lawsuits allege that British officials were complicit in their alleged mistreatment after their capture, when the detainees were held in other countries.

Earlier this year, a British court released evidence that one of the detainees, an Ethiopian-born resident of Britain, had been subjected to "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment by U.S. authorities.

The ruling prompted Prime Minister Cameron to say in July that the government would offer compensation "wherever appropriate" to those who brought civil action over their treatment.

In his newly published memoir, former U.S. President George W. Bush defended the use of harsh interrogation techniques on terror detainees. Mr. Bush said the technique known as "waterboarding" that simulates drowning helped save British and American lives.