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LONDON — A British ISIL fighter who carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq this week is a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who was paid US$1.25 million compensation by the government.

Jamal al-Harith, 50, a Muslim convert born Ronald Fiddler, detonated a car bomb at an Iraqi army base near Mosul, causing an unverified number of casualties.

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He had been released from the US detention camp in 2004 and successfully claimed compensation after saying British agents knew of — or were complicit in — his mistreatment.

He was freed following intense lobbying by Tony Blair’s Labour government.

Al-Harith, who used the nom de guerre Abu-Zakariya al-Britani, entered Syria via Turkey in 2014 to join Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, leading to questions about the monitoring of terrorist suspects.

It also raised the possibility that he had handed on to ISIL the compensation paid by British taxpayers.