A Muslim lawyer who was suspended from work by the Crown Prosecution Service after joking she was treated like a friend of Osama bin Laden has been awarded a record £600,000 payout for racial discrimination, it emerged last night.

An employment tribunal found that there was "not a shred of evidence" to support the treatment of Halima Aziz by the CPS and ordered it to reinstate her and issue a full and unequivocal apology, according to documents seen by Channel 4 News.

The seven-year battle has cost the taxpayer an additional £500,000 in legal costs, said the programme.

Ms Aziz said she would have accepted a simple apology after the initial incident and was "100% certain" she would have been treated differently if she was not Muslim and of Asian origin.

The lawyer was working at Bradford Crown Court in October 2001 - a month after 9/11 - when she was accused of blaming the terror attacks in the US on "Jews".

Ms Aziz denies making this comment, saying that in fact she joked, as she was going through a security check at the court, that she was being treated like a friend of Bin Laden.

She was suspended from duty, accused of inciting racial violence, associating herself with bin Laden and voicing anti-American sentiments, but was cleared of all allegations in 2002.

Now the Employment Tribunal has found that senior officials at the CPS were guilty of racial discrimination for the way they handled her case and that a previous inquiry run by chief executive Peter Lewis was a "whitewash".

Its judgment stated: "This would be a completely unacceptable response on the part of any employer, but for a public body like the Crown Prosecution Service it can only be regarded as astonishing."

Ms Aziz's lawyer Mark Emery, of Bindmans solicitors, called for an independent inquiry.

"According to this judgment, serious questions have got to be asked at chief executive level and it is possible that questions have got to be asked higher up the chain," he told Channel 4.

Ms Aziz said: "(The CPS) still haven't given me an apology for what they have done. If they had apologised to me right at the beginning words would have been enough.

She said she was hoping to use the payout to build an orphanage in Pakistan.

In a statement, the CPS said: "The CPS accepts the recommendations made by the Employment Tribunal and will be implementing them as a matter of priority. We offer a full apology to Halima Aziz."