LONDON – Britain has agreed to pay compensation to an Algerian pilot who was held in jail for five months after he was wrongly accused of involvement in the September 11th, 2001, attacks.
Lotfi Raissi was arrested 10 days after the attacks on New York and Washington, threatened with extradition to the US and put in a maximum security prison because US police thought he had been involved in the al-Qaeda plot.
The allegations against him proved to be false and he was later released. Mr Raissi has since been trying to clear his name, saying he had been blacklisted from all airline jobs and his life had been ruined.
“This is one of the best days of my life. I am completely exonerated now by the ministry of justice and I am delighted,” he told the BBC. “My life was destroyed, my career was destroyed. It was hell for me for the last nine years. I suffered discrimination, I suffered racism, my life wasn’t safe.”
The British-based Algerian had studied at a flight school in Arizona and US officials believed he was linked to the hijacker who crashed an aircraft into the Pentagon. A British court later dismissed the accusations, ruling that the allegations were unsubstantiated, and the pilot began his bid for compensation.
This was rejected by the British government in 2004 but four years later the court of appeal ordered ministers to reconsider, saying the way extradition proceedings and refusal of bail had been conducted amounted to “an abuse of process”.
A spokesman for the British ministry of justice confirmed that Mr Raissi would now receive compensation. – (Reuters)