British government urged to intervene in US torture row

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband was tonight urged to intervene after an extraordinary row erupted between the British courts and the US administration over the release of documents relating to allegations of torture.

Two senior judges said the US government had threatened to review its intelligence-sharing relationship with the UK if the material was placed in the public domain.

The documents contain details of the treatment by the US of Ethiopian Binyam Mohamed, a former UK resident being held in Guantanamo Bay, who claims British agencies were complicit in his torture.

The High Court ruled the dossier provided by the US authorities should remain secret but bitterly criticised the Americans over the way they had sought to prevent the information from being released.

British officials insisted there had been no direct threat from the US to future intelligence-sharing, although there would have been clear implications for future exchanges of information if the material had been made public.

In their ruling, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones said it was "difficult to conceive" that a democratically elected and accountable government could have any rational objection to the summary of Mohamed's treatment by US agencies being published.

While it contained "evidence ... relevant to allegations of torture'' it did not reveal sensitive intelligence material despite being "politically embarrassing".

"We did not consider that a democracy governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials ... relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be," they said.

"We had no reason ... to anticipate there would be made a threat of the gravity of the kind made by the United States Government that it would reconsider its intelligence sharing relationship, when all the considerations in relation to open justice pointed to us providing a limited but important summary of the reports.''

They said they had decided not to release the material as Mr Miliband believed there was a "real risk'' that the potential loss of intelligence co-operation would seriously increase the threat from terror faced by the UK.

They urged the new US administration of Barack Obama to reconsider the decision.