UK to appeal order demanding publication of US torture docs

By Agence France-Presse
Saturday, October 17th, 2009 -- 9:27 am
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torturegitmociaharsh UK to appeal order demanding publication of US torture docsBritain will appeal against a court ruling ordering it to publish secret US intelligence documents related to the alleged torture of a former Guantanamo Bay inmate, it said.

Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British resident, was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 on suspicion of links to extremists and spent six-and-a-half years in US custody in Morocco, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

His lawyers are seeking the release of information they say will show that Britain knew he was being tortured during his time in US custody in Morocco, a claim which is strongly denied by officials here.

Both Britain and the US spoke out against the ruling.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband said he was "deeply disappointed" and warned the judgment could cause the United States to limit the information it shared with Britain in future.

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"The government is deeply disappointed by the judgment handed down today by the High Court which concludes that a summary of US intelligence material should be put into the public domain against their wishes," Miliband said.

"We will be appealing in the strongest possible terms."

Meanwhile, US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said: "We are not pleased", adding that Washington kept such information confidential "to protect our own citizens".

Mohamed was taken to the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in 2004 and released in February this year, the first detainee to be freed under US President Barack Obama, who has pledged to close the camp.

He himself says it is of vital importance that the material is released to back up his claims of having suffered "medieval" torture.

"The public needs to know what their government has been up to for the last seven years," Mohamed told the BBC.

"There's information in there, which I'm 99 percent sure, states that the US sub-contracted the UK government to do its dirty work."

Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve, a legal rights charity acting for Mohamed, agreed.

"The judges have made clear what we have said all along -- it is irrational to pretend that evidence of torture should be classified as a threat to national security," he said.

"All along, the government has been trying to conflate national security with national embarrassment, nothing more, nothing less."

Mohamed was suspected of attending an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and of plotting to build a radioactive "dirty bomb", but was never charged.

Miliband said the "fundamental question" was not the information itself but the risks its publication posed to intelligence-sharing arrangements.

"I've very happy for the documents to be published -- but not by us, by the Americans," he told Sky News television.

In a statement responding to the court ruling, he added: "The US will not prejudice its own intelligence if it perceives that this intelligence may be disclosed at the order of a foreign court or otherwise.

"It remains my assessment that the consequence of the court's judgment today, if left unchallenged, will be a restriction on what is shared with us."

The US intelligence was contained in seven paragraphs that were edited out of a judgment about Mohamed last year at the British government's request, but judges John Thomas and David Lloyd Jones reversed this decision Friday.

"As the risk to national security, judged objectively on the evidence, is not a serious one, we should restore the redacted paragraphs to our first judgment" in August 2008, they said.

The ruling came the day after the head of Britain's MI5 security service, Jonathan Evans, defended working with foreign agencies while insisting Britain did not collude in torture.

He said his service had faced a "real dilemma" about working with some foreign agencies but "would have been derelict in our duty" if it had not, in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

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Story comments are below...
  • texasaggie
    "All along, the government has been trying to conflate national security with national embarrassment, nothing more, nothing less."

    Cover article of DUH!!! Magazine
  • Bob_in_Prague
    This all might be amusing, were it not about the end of the world as we know it and unhappy stuff like that. Is there a hole for me to be sick in?
  • Sonny
    The United States government is an ongoing criminal enterprise. We are in essence trying to blackmail the Brits into covering up U.S. war crimes. See also today's Glenn Greenwald post at Salon.com.
  • johnhkennedy
    Doesn't surprise me. Here in the US Obama's Administration ignores Judicial Decisions. The cover up artists really stick together. The CIA is the problem. They go into other nations at the behest of the Oil Industry and other Big Corporations and We Voters Pay for their screw ups for decades in Billions of wasted tax dollars and Dead Sons and Daughters.

    When will we wake up and force the Obama Administration to come clean about
    Obama's CoverUp of the Bush-Cheney Torture Conspiracy?

    Put yourself out for the Truth.
    Get out in the streets in front of your Congressional Representative's office and raise hell.
    Start your own "prosecution" protest group.

    KEEP ASKING ALL POLITICIANS AT ALL PUBLIC EVENTS
    "WHY DO YOU SUPPORT TORTURE?"
    If they aren't actively calling for enforcement of our Federal Torture Laws, They DO Support Torture and a dual standard of Justice.

    SIGN THE PETITIONS
    Demanding prosecution for all those leaders in Bush's Administration that Conspired to Torture at

    ANGRYVOTERS.ORG

    .
  • turnip
    The US and UK are owned by the same feudal masters, so there will be no problem with any of this really.
  • dennycrane
    Things would be different if the "prince" was in this poor man's spot. The pawns always lead us to the "end" game.
  • AdamT
    What jurisdiction does the UK have over the US supreme court? We are a sovereign nation people like it or not.
  • sanchosdad
    cheney tried to torture a confession out of this poor guy for several years. he knew nothing. and cheney's guys cant/wont let the boss face justice.

    i say up against the wall for the lot of them. especially cheney and bush. they deserve to have their fingernails ripped out over this. they should see how it feels.
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