Wednesday
Feb042009
US Threatens UK to Keep Gitmo Torture Secret
Wednesday, February 4, 2009 at 20:58
(thanks to Ali Yenidunya for co-writing this entry)
The British High Court ruled this afternoon that evidence of the torture of a Britain resident at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and the British intelligence services' knowledge of that torture, must remain secret because of US threats to stop sharing intelligence with Britain.
The judges unhappily and reluctantly issued their decision in the case of Binyam Mohamed, who has been held in Guantanamo since 2002. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband had claim that the disclosure of evidence, originally contained in documents given to him by the US government, would threaten British national security.
The judges made clear that they had been told the US threat remained in place under the Obama Administration. This outweighed their assessment that there was "no disclosure of sensitive intelligence matters" in the American documents:
David Davis, Conservative Member of Parliament and former Shadow Home Minister, has taken the issue to the House of Commons. He wants to investigate whether the UK was threatened by the US officials and whether Britain had taken part in tortures: “David Miliband, the UK Foreign Minister, should explain what degree of complicity we have in this.”
The British High Court ruled this afternoon that evidence of the torture of a Britain resident at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and the British intelligence services' knowledge of that torture, must remain secret because of US threats to stop sharing intelligence with Britain.
The judges unhappily and reluctantly issued their decision in the case of Binyam Mohamed, who has been held in Guantanamo since 2002. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband had claim that the disclosure of evidence, originally contained in documents given to him by the US government, would threaten British national security.
The judges made clear that they had been told the US threat remained in place under the Obama Administration. This outweighed their assessment that there was "no disclosure of sensitive intelligence matters" in the American documents:
Indeed, 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.
David Davis, Conservative Member of Parliament and former Shadow Home Minister, has taken the issue to the House of Commons. He wants to investigate whether the UK was threatened by the US officials and whether Britain had taken part in tortures: “David Miliband, the UK Foreign Minister, should explain what degree of complicity we have in this.”