Update: Binyam Mohamed and the Hiding of Torture Evidence

Related Post: Binyam Mohamed - Guantanamo Torture Evidence Hidden from Obama
Related Post: Binyam Mohamed - "I Know Beyond a Doubt He Was Tortured"

On 4 February, we reported on a British High Court decision which reluctantly ruled that it could not consider documents related to the alleged torture of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The court said that US authorities had threatened to cut off intelligence-sharing with Britain if the evidence was disclosed.

Well, guess what? Turns out it was the British Foreign Office who asked the US to make the threat. From this morning's Observer of London:

[A] former senior State Department official said: "Far from being a threat, it was solicited [by the Foreign Office]." The Foreign Office asked for it in writing. They said: 'Give us something in writing so that we can put it on the record.' If you give us a letter explaining you are opposed to this, then we can provide that to the court."

The letter, sent by the State Department's top legal adviser John Bellinger to foreign secretary David Miliband's legal adviser, Daniel Bethlehem, on 21 August last year, said: "We want to affirm in the clearest terms that the public disclosure of these documents or of the information contained therein is likely to result in serious damage to US national security and could harm existing intelligence-sharing arrangements."