A British resident back home after more than four years in Guantanamo Bay could now claim thousands of pounds in benefits if he is allowed to stay in the UK.
Binyam Mohamed, who flew back from the controversial camp in Cuba yesterday, is almost certain to be given permission to remain here permanently.
This would make him eligible for State benefits, and he could even apply for legal aid to fund a multi-million-pound compensation claim against the Government.
Ehiopian-born Mohamed, 30, first arrived in the UK in 1994, aged 16, and was refused asylum but in 2000 he was granted leave to remain until 2004.
By this time, he was already incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay.
After more than four years in the prison camp, he landed back in Britain yesterday vowing to expose Whitehall 'collusion' in his torture.
He was flown back on a luxury Gulfstream jet accompanied by two Foreign Office officials, two Metropolitan police officers and a doctor.
The Foreign Office and Home Office jointly paid for the trip, which is estimated to have cost as much as £160,000.
A Foreign Office spokesman refused to comment on the figure today. He said: 'The overall cost of the operation is not yet known.'
Mohamed was initially held under terror laws, although not arrested, and questioned by officers 'conducting investigations into his case'. Five hours later, he was freed.
He has agreed to abide by several voluntary security measures in Britain, including regular reports to a police station.
His immigration status will now also be under review. So far, he has been given 'temporary admission' to the UK while the Home Office considers his case.
If he is allowed to stay permanently, his benefits entitlements would be boosted because refugees cannot claim payouts like Income Support and Housing Benefit.
Someone with indefinite leave to remain can qualify for Housing Benefit of £60.50 a week and council tax relief which can be worth hundreds of pounds a year.
If Mohamed looks for work, he will be entitled to claim Jobseeker's Allowance of £60.50 a week.
However, if his physical and emotional maltreatment have left him unable to work, he could be eligible for Disability Living Allowance of up to £113.75 a week or Employment Support Allowance of up to £89.50.
His lawyers are privately confident that he will not be deported or arrested, meaning he will probably remain at liberty to spend the rest of his life in Britain.
Some are already questioning why Britain had campaigned to have Ethiopian-born Mohamed back at all because of the cost of his return and ongoing supervision.
Tory backbencher Philip Davies said: 'Why on earth we should be taking in this chap? If he was a UK citizen, fair enough. But he's not and only happened to be living here for a few years.
'We also don't know if this chap is a risk. If he is a danger then is he putting people's lives at risk, let alone the huge cost of the police and security services monitoring him?'
Mohamed had been on hunger strike until earlier this month in protest at his treatment in Guantanamo and looked extremely gaunt on his return yesterday.
However, he managed to walk from the plane unaided after the ten-hour flight from Cuba to RAF Northolt in North-West London.
The U.S. agreed to a British request to free him last week. All charges against him had already been dropped and he was never tried.
In a statement released by his lawyers to coincide with his return, Mohamed said: 'I have been through an experience that I never thought to encounter in my darkest nightmares.
'I was abducted, hauled from one country to the next, and tortured in medieval ways - all orchestrated by the U.S. government.
'I am not asking for vengeance - only that the truth should be made known so that nobody in the future should have to endure what I have endured.'
Mohamed spent a total of seven years in U.S. custody after being arrested in Pakistan in 2002 as a suspected Al Qaeda terrorist.
He had left Britain - where had been granted exceptional leave to remain after arriving from the U.S. as a teenager - in late 2001 for Afghanistan.
He has apparently insisted that he went there to kick a drug habit and see for himself if the Taliban had created a good Islamic regime.
Mohamed claimed yesterday that the deepest despair of his ordeal came when he realised the British agents he hoped would come to his rescue were actually working with his tormentors.
In his statement, he said: 'Many have been complicit in my own horrors over the past seven years.
'I realised in Morocco that the people who were torturing me were receiving questions and materials from British intelligence.
'I had met with British intelligence in Pakistan. I had been open with them. Yet the very people who I had hoped would come to my rescue, I later realised, had allied themselves with my abusers.'
His comments prompted calls by Amnesty International for a full public inquiry and opposition MPs demanded that the Foreign Secretary come clean over allegations of Britain's involvement.
David Miliband officially welcomed Mohamed's return yesterday, but he is already under intense pressure for refusing to publish secret files said to show that British agents helped the Americans inflict hideous abuse on the prisoner during his detention in Morocco, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Mr Miliband has repeatedly insisted that Britain 'abhors' torture and never orders or condones it.
But Mohamed claims that Britain knew his U.S. captors hung him from wrist straps, beat him and mutilated his genitals with a scalpel to make him confess to a 'dirty bomb' plot.
Early on, he was questioned by an MI5 agent in Pakistan, although the British spy has never been accused of carrying out any torture directly.
Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague said it was 'high time' the Government asked the new U.S. administration for permission to release secret files on the matter.
He added: 'If the Government had done this, they would not be facing allegations of a cover-up.'
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Edward Davey said: 'Now that Binyam Mohamed has landed in Britain, the Government is out of excuses for delaying a full inquiry into its involvement in his alleged torture.'
Lord Carlile of Berriew, the independent reviewer of terrorism laws, has urged Mr Miliband to 'lance the sore' over Mohamed's treatment by publishing details which were edited out of a High Court judgment.
Mohamed was released from Northolt at 6.45pm and driven away. He said he was 'neither physically nor mentally capable' of facing the media yet.
Gordon Brown refused to say if Mohamed would face any restrictions on his movement, insisting that national security had to be the priority.
His lawyer Clive Stafford Smith said he would spend the next few days or weeks in 'a quiet place to recover from his ordeal'.
He batted away a question about whether Mohamed had really been 'on holiday' in Afghanistan.
Mr Stafford Smith said: 'If people have got problems with Binyam going to Afghanistan, that's their problem. Human rights are human rights, not just for British citizens. He's not angry, he's sad. He's lost seven years of his life.'
Mohamed could stay at a rural property belonging to a wealthy supporter of Reprieve, the campaign group which lobbied for his release.
But his lawyer would not say where Mohamed will spent the next few days, adding: 'He just wants to go to a place we've got him for tonight where he can be by himself with his sister and he can try to get his life together again.'
Mohamed's statement
'I hope you will understand that after everything I have been through I am neither physically nor mentally capable of facing the media on my arrival back to Britain. Please forgive me if I make a simple statement through my lawyer. I hope to be able to do better in days to come.
I have been through an experience that I never thought to encounter in my darkest nightmares.
Before this ordeal, 'torture' was an abstract word to me. I could never have imagined that I would be its victim.
It is still difficult for me to believe that I was abducted, hauled from one country to the next, and tortured in medieval ways - all orchestrated by the U.S government.
While I want to recover, and put it all as far in my past as I can, I also know I have an obligation to the people who still remain in those torture chambers. My own despair was greatest when I thought that everyone had abandoned me. I have a duty to make sure that nobody else is forgotten.
I am grateful that in the end I was not simply left to my fate. I am grateful to my lawyers and other staff at Reprieve, and to Lt Col Yvonne Bradley, who fought for my freedom.
I am grateful to the members of the British Foreign Office who worked for my release.
And I want to thank people around Britain who wrote to me in Guantanamo Bay to keep my spirits up, as well as to the members of the media who tried to make sure that the world knew what was going on.
I know I would not be home in Britain today if it were not for everyone's support. Indeed, I might not be alive at all. I wish I could say that it is all over, but it is not.
There are still 241 Muslim prisoners in Guantanamo. Many have long since been cleared even by the U.S. military, yet cannot go anywhere as they face persecution.
And I have to say, more in sadness than in anger, that many have been complicit in my own horrors over the past seven years.
For myself, the very worst moment came when I realised in Morocco that the people who were torturing me were receiving questions and materials from British intelligence.
I had met with British intelligence in Pakistan. I had been open with them. Yet the very people who I had hoped would come to my rescue, I later realised, had allied themselves with my abusers.
I am not asking for vengeance; only that the truth should be made known, so that nobody in the future should have to endure what I have endured. Thank you.'
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