A GUANTANAMO Bay prisoner held for nearly two decades without a trial will receive a “substantial” compensation from the British government.

Abu Zubaydah won a civil claim against the government, arguing that the state’s intelligence services were complicit in his torture in the US military prison on the island of Cuba.

A June 2018 parliamentary report found that British intelligence officers questioned Mr Zubaydah early in his detention while knowing he had been tortured, including being waterboarded 83 times.

Mr Zubaydah was captured in 2002 in Pakistan before being transferred to CIA custody and held in multiple secret black sites around the world.

He was alleged to be a senior al-Qaida leader, but the US later withdrew this claim.

Mr Zubaydah’s civil case against Britain has now been resolved through a financial settlement, but details have not been made public.

He remains detained without charge and is one of 15 prisoners still thought to be held in the military prison.

His international legal counsel, Helen Duffy, told BBC radio that the settlement “implicitly recognises the intolerable suffering that he has endured for his torture and unlawful ongoing detention at Guantanamo Bay.”

She said: “But it’s clearly insufficient in that he does continue to languish in unlawful detention.”

Former MI6 chief from 2020 to 2025, Sir Richard Moore, also said today that “lessons have been learned and it’s a very different approach these days.”

He defended the intelligence services, saying that these events took “place well over 20 years ago in a very different world.”

Intelligence operations are now overseen by senior judges, he said, thanks to the formation of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office in 2017, which monitors the collection of data and police investigations.