Court orders release of Binyam torture papers
Updated on 10 February 2010
The Foreign Office releases seven paragraphs relating to the treatment of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed, after losing a Court of Appeal bid to prevent publication.
The ruling is the latest in the long-running proceedings relating to British resident Mr Mohamed, who maintains that he was tortured in Pakistan and Morocco when being held by the CIA, and that Britain knew about it.
The Court of Appeal dismissed the Foreign Office bid as the information redacted from a previous court ruling on Mr Mohamed's case has since been put in the public domain after a court judgement in the US relating to another Guantanamo detainee referred to Mr Mohamed's treatment.
On of the paragraphs redacted states that the treatment Mr Mohamed received "could readily be contended to be at the very least cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities".
More Channel 4 News coverage of Binyam Mohamed's case
- Binyam Mohamed ruling a 'tactical retreat'
- Full text of the redacted paragraphs
- High court lifts ban on 'torture' documents
Giving the court's ruling, Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge said there was no secret about the treatment to which Mr Mohamed was subjected while in the control of the US authorities.
"We are no longer dealing with the allegations of torture and ill-treatment; they have been established in the judgment of the court, publicly revealed by the judicial processes within the USA itself."
Mr Mohamed, 31, was born in Ethiopia and granted refugee status in Britain in 1994. He was detained in Pakistan in 2002 on suspicion of involvement in terrorism and then "rendered" to Morocco and Afghanistan.
He was sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2004 and returned to the UK last February after his release, and has since been pursuing his case against the UK government.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband argued that they fought the case to maintain a "control principle" that intelligence shared with the UK would be protected.
He told MPs: "At issue in this case was not the content of the seven paragraphs, but the principle of their disclosures by an English court against US wishes.
"Crucially the court has upheld the control principle today - the judgement describes that principle as integral to intelligence sharing."
Binyam Mohamed's lawyer Clive Stafford Smith told Channel 4 News the Foreign Office publication of seven paragraphs relating to the case is only a "tactical retreat".
"The publication of the infamous "seven paragraphs" on the FCO website today is an extraordinary illustration of the lengths to which the government has gone to hide evidence of torture," he said.
"What the British media and the British public don’t yet know is the degree to which British agents – sanctioned by the British government – were fully aware of what was happening.
"In other words, there is far worse to come, and the British government has today only made a tactical retreat."
QC's letter
A letter written by one of the government lawyers also emerged in which he protested at the strength of a judge's draft judgement in the case.
Jonathan Sumption QC wrote a letter to the Appeal Court on Monday after seeing a draft copy of the judgment of the Master of the Rolls (MR), Lord Neuberger.
The QC said the draft would be read as a court statement "that the Security Service does not in fact operate a culture that respects human rights or abjures participation in coercive interrogation techniques".
In his letter to the judges, Mr Sumption said the MR's draft observations in upholding the High Court decision "go well beyond" anything found by the court.
The QC said those observations constituted "an exceptionally damaging criticism of the good faith of the Security Service as a whole".
The version of the MR's decision published today did not contain the passages objected to by the QC, leading to accusations that it has been "watered down".
Media lawyer Mark Stephens said: "It is a breach of the long-standing constitutional principle (from the 1637 Ship Money case) that governments may not secretly communicate with the court or with judges."
