AN Islander who was interned in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during the war is being denied compensation for his ordeal by the British government because he lives in Jersey.

The family of Benjamin Aaron have been campaigning for more than a year to persuade the War Pensions Department to pay out the £10,000 they say he is due. Mr Aaron was a teenager when the Japanese invaded Singapore in 1942. Like hundreds of other civilians, he and his family were rounded up and put in camps between 1943 and 1945, when the former British colony was liberated. In 2000, and after decades of pressure from those captured by the Japanese, it was agreed that civilian internees would be paid £10,000 in compensation. To qualify for the payout, the British government insisted that a minimum residence of 20 years in the UK was required. Mr Aaron moved to Jersey in the mid-1950s and made his home here after marrying a Jersey girl. He was therefore deemed ineligible for the compensation. Then, a couple of years ago, the right to compensation was extended to those who had lived in certain European countries for 20 years or more. Again, however, Jersey was not included on that list.