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| Britain |
| Guantánamo Bay detainees win huge payouts |
| 2010-11-15 |
| The government is cutting assistance to old age pensioners and the showering these terrorist with taxpayers money. I feel a revolution coming on. The government will announce today that it will pay millions of pounds in compensation to former Guantánamo Bay detainees following weeks of negotiations between lawyers for the government and the former prisoners. Ministers appear to have decided on the advice of the security services that they could not afford to risk the exposure of thousands of documents in open court on how the US, with the co-operation of the UK, undertook illegal acts such as extraordinary rendition to interrogate terrorist suspects, including some alleged to have links with the Afghan Taliban. The high court, according to ITN, has been notified that a settlement had been reached between the lawyers, but the exact amounts may never be known. The government will announce simply that the payments are to be made and that it is in the national interest that the cases are not brought to court so as to protect the security services' methods from scrutiny. Two independent QCs have been acting as arbiters between the two sides. At least one detainee is understood to be in line for a payout of more than £1m. |
| Posted by:tipper |