Britain loses bid to block torture case information
Judges rejected the government’s claim that revealing the information would damage US-British intelligence co-operation.
The information disclosed is a judge’s seven-paragraph summary of US intelligence information given to British spies about former detainee Binyam Mohamed’s treatment during interrogations by the Americans in Pakistan in May 2002.
Mohamed’s lawyers have long claimed the secret paragraphs prove he was mistreated and that the US and British governments were complicit in his abuse. They have been fighting for access to the documents, along with several news organisations.
The paragraphs say Mohamed was subjected to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities,” including sleep deprivation, shackling and threats resulting in mental stress and suffering.
They conclude that the paragraphs given to the MI5 intelligence service, “made clear to anyone reading them that BM (Mohamed) was being subjected to the treatment that we have described and the effect upon him of that intentional treatment”.
British authorities have repeatedly denied complicity in torture.
Ethiopia-born Mohamed was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and says he was tortured there and in Morocco before being flown to Guantanamo Bay. He was released without charge last year.
The decision yesterday upholds an earlier High Court ruling ordering officials to make public the secret seven-paragraph summary of US intelligence files. The Foreign Office appealed that ruling, but said yesterday it would abide by the latest judgment and posted the paragraphs on its website.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband restated the government’s backing for the principle that “if a country shares intelligence with another, that country must agree before its intelligence is released”.
Miliband told the House of Commons that a possible restriction of intelligence sharing between the US and Britain was “of grave concern”.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of the rights group Liberty, said a “full and broad” public inquiry into British complicity in torture is needed in light of the information in the newly released paragraphs.
“It shows the British authorities knew far more than they let on about Binyam Mohamed and how he was tortured in US custody... Our hands are very dirty indeed.”
She said it is now evident that British authorities were complicit in the use of torture and benefited from it.
The case began in 2008 when Mohamed was facing a military trial at Guantanamo. His lawyers sued the British government for intelligence documents they said could prove that evidence against him had been gathered under torture.
Mohamed, 31, moved to Britain as a teenager. He was arrested as a terrorist suspect in 2002 in Karachi by Pakistani forces and later transferred to Morocco, Afghanistan and in 2004 to Guantanamo Bay.
He says he was tortured in Pakistan, and that interrogators in Morocco beat him, deprived him of sleep and sliced his genitals with a scalpel.
It isn’t clear which country the interrogators were from, but Mohamed has alleged the questions put to him could only have come from British agents.
MI5 has said it did not know Mohamed was being tortured, or held in Morocco.
Mohamed was charged by the US with plotting with al-Qaida to bomb American apartment buildings, but the charges were later dropped and in February 2009 he was sent back to Britain. That chain of events led to the lawsuit becoming a larger battle for access to information involving the AP, the BBC and other media organisations.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
