Lotfi Raissi, 33, was arrested in London 10 days after the September 11, 2001 attacks and held at the high-security Belmarsh prison in the southeast of the capital.

Even though the allegations against him were proved false, Raissi says he is now blacklisted from all airline jobs and his life has been ruined.

The British government rejected a claim for compensation lodged by Raissi in 2004.

But on Thursday the Court of Appeal in London ordered the government to reconsider the compensation claim, saying that the way extradition proceedings and refusals of bail had been conducted were "an abuse of process".

The United States had argued Raissi was linked to Hani Hanjour, the pilot suspected of crashing a passenger plane into the Pentagon in Washington.

It had sought to extradite Raissi on two counts of falsifying an application for a U.S. pilot's licence, but a British court dismissed the charges in 2002.

After the appeal court ruling, Raissi said he wanted a public apology from the British government.

"I want a widely publicised apology for the part that they played. I am not a terrorist, I abhor terrorism," he told BBC television.

The Ministry of Justice said it was considering whether to appeal the ruling.