Blair Hit Out Daily Mail as 'Utter Hypocrisy'

LONDON - Tony Blair has denied that a Labour government paid compensation to the former Guantánamo Bay detainee who went on to blow himself up in Iraq, in a strongly worded statement in which he accused the Daily Mail of hypocritical coverage over the Manchester-born jihadi’s death.

The former prime minister said compensation, thought to amount to £1m, was paid out under the Conservative-led coalition government in 2010 and criticised the tabloid for blaming him and Labour instead.

“He was not paid compensation by my government. The compensation was agreed in 2010 by the Conservative government,” Blair said.

On Wednesday morning, the Daily Mail’s front-page story was the death of Jamal al-Harith, who changed his name from Ronald Fiddler after converting to Islam in his 20s but most recently went by the nom de guerre Abu Zakariya al-Britani in which Blair’s government was singled out for “intense lobbying” for his release.

Blair hit out at the Daily Mail’s “utter hypocrisy”, pointing out that the newspaper led a media campaign for Harith’s release from Guantánamo Bay.

“It is correct that Jamal al-Harith was released from Guantánamo Bay at the request of the British government in 2004,” he said. “This followed a massive media and parliamentary campaign, led by the Daily Mail, the very paper that is now supposedly so outraged at his release, and strongly supported by the then Conservative opposition.”

The former prime minister singled out a headline entitled “Still think he wasn’t a danger, Mr Blair? Fury at Labour government’s £1m compensation for innocent Brit.”

“The Mail headline shortly after he was released after months of their campaigning was Freedom at last for Guantánamo Britons’. They then quoted with approval various human rights activists saying, ‘Clearly, by what’s happened they’re not bad guys, they are entirely innocent’.”

Harith (50) is said by Islamic State to have carried out the suicide attack on coalition forces near Mosul on Monday.

A British former Guantánamo Bay detainee, Manchester-born Harith was paid the £1m in compensation by the UK government after his release in 2004 from the US-operated military prison. In 2014, 10 years after he returned to the UK, he left for Syria to join Isis.

Harith was reportedly awarded compensation after claiming that British agents knew he was being mistreated during the time he was held without charge at Guantánamo.

He died on Monday in a small village, named Abu Saif, around three miles south of Mosul Airport, a senior Iraqi government source confirmed. The village was seen by Isis as a gateway to the airport, which Iraqi forces intend to use as a launching pad for the operation to retake the western half of Mosul. Iraqi officials say no troops or civilians were killed or wounded in the attack.

Blair, who was prime minister from 1997 to 2007, said: “The fact is that this was always a very difficult situation where any government would have to balance proper concern for civil liberties with desire to protect our security, and we were likely to be attacked whatever course we took. The reason it did take a long time for their release was precisely the anxiety over their true affiliations.”

He added: “Those who demanded their release should not be allowed to get away with now telling us that it is a scandal that it happened.”