Submissions due in Binyam Mohamed case
Updated on 16 February 2010
Lawyers have until today to make their final submissions to the Master of the Rolls in the Binyam Mohamed case - with his decision expected as early as Thursday.
Last week, as Channel 4 News revealed, government lawyers persuaded the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, to water down his criticisms of MI5 - and he now has to decide if he was right to do so.
Lord Neuberger is considering submissions from lawyers acting for Mr Mohamed, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, and several media organisations. His judgment is likely to be published this week.
On February 10, Lord Neuberger and two other senior judges published a summary revealing that MI5 had been aware Mr Mohamed was mistreated while in US detention.
The Master of the Rolls had intended to include a paragraph criticising MI5, but government lawyer Jonathan Sumption convinced him not to after saying it was "likely to receive more public attention than any other part of the judgments".
Mr Sumption argued that his words implied that MI5 "does not in fact operate a culture that respects human rights or abjures participation in coercive interrogation techniques".
It could also be inferred that the Security Service had misled parliament and operated a "culture of suppression".
Mr Mohamed, who was born in Ethiopia, was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and interrogated as a suspected terrorist by US agents. He was tortured in Morocco before being flown to Guantanamo. He was released in early 2009.
On Friday, the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans took the highly unusual step of writing an article for the Daily Telegraph in which he refuted allegations that his organisation had been involved in a cover-up.
He denied the government had wanted Mr Mohamed's treatment kept secret because of supposed British collusion, saying it had done so "in order to protect the vital intelligence relationship with America and, by extension, with other countries".
He added: "We did not practise mistreatment or torture then and do not do so now, nor do we collude in torture or encourage others to torture on our behalf."
The Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg claimed that senior government ministers probably knew about claims of Britain's involvement in torture, but had failed to take action to stop it.
He demanded to know if ministers were told the US had changed its rules on torture after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
