Jane Onyanga-Omara

USA TODAY

LONDON — An Islamic State suicide bomber who attacked an army base in Iraq this week was a British former Guantanamo Bay detainee who was awarded more than $1 million in compensation, according to media reports Tuesday.

Ronald Fiddler, who became known as Jamal al-Harith after converting to Islam in the 1990s, was freed from the detention camp in 2004 after lobbying by the government of then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

He was awarded 1 million pounds (now about $1.25 million) in compensation after saying British agents were complicit in his mistreatment, the Telegraph reported.

He was announced as a suicide bomber who targeted coalition forces outside Mosul this week when ISIS released a picture of him smiling in a 4x4 that was seen in video footage speeding down a track. ISIS claimed Harith caused multiple casualties, according to the Times of London.

Harith, 50, traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, in 2014, raising fears that the money given to him had been passed on to ISIS. He was known to fellow militants as Abu-Zakariya al-Britani.

Harith, who was accused of having links to Osama bin Laden, was held in Guantanamo Bay without charge for two years after he was discovered in a Taliban prison in Afghanistan in 2001, the Times of London reported.

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Manchester-born Harith’s brother Leon Jameson told the newspaper that his brother “wasted his life.”

“It is him, I can tell by his smile,” he said of the ISIS image. “If it is true then I’ve lost a brother, so another family (member) gone.”

In a statement Blair, the former Labour Party prime minister, denounced the way in which the story was being covered by some media.

"It is correct that Jamal al-Harith was released from Guantanamo Bay at the request of the British Government in 2004," the statement said. "He was not paid compensation by my Government. The compensation was agreed in 2010 by the Conservative Government."

"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," he added.

U.S.-backed Iraqi forces launched an offensive Sunday to drive the militants from Mosul, Iraq’s second-biggest city and their last stronghold in the country.

Government-sanctioned Shiite militiamen launched a new push to seize villages west of Mosul from ISIS on Wednesday. The militants captured Mosul in 2014.

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