LONDON – Britain was forced by an appeals court Wednesday to reveal a long-secret description of how a former terrorism suspect was beaten, shackled and deprived of sleep during interrogations by U.S. agents.
Ethiopia-born British resident Binyam Mohamed was arrested in Pakistan in 2002, and says he was tortured there and in Morocco before being flown to Guantanamo Bay and charged with plotting with al-Qaida to bomb American apartment buildings.
The seven-paragraph description is a judge’s summary of classified information shared by the CIA with the UK’s MI5 intelligence service during Mohamed’s questioning in Pakistan in May 2002.
British government has repeatedly denied complicity in torture, and claimed that revealing the information would damage U.S.-British intelligence cooperation.
Mohamed’s lawyers claimed the seven paragraphs prove that the U.S. and British governments were complicit in extracting evidence against him through torture. They have been fighting for access to the documents along with The Associated Press and other news organizations.
The paragraphs posted on the Web site of the British Foreign Office after the court decision say Mohamed was subjected to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities,” including sleep deprivation, shackling and threats resulting in mental stress and suffering, during interviews by U.S. authorities.
They conclude that the paragraphs given to MI5, “made clear to anyone reading them that BM (Mohamed) was being subjected to the treatment that we have described and the effect upon him of that intentional treatment.”
The charges against Mohamed were later dropped.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of the rights group Liberty, said a “full and broad” public inquiry into British complicity in torture is needed in light of the information contained in the newly released paragraphs.
“It shows the British authorities knew far more than they let on about Binyam Mohamed and how he was tortured in U.S. custody,” she said. “It is clear from these seven paragraphs that our authorities knew very well what was happening to Mr. Mohamed. Our hands are very dirty indeed.”
She said it is now evident that British authorities were complicit in the use of torture and benefited from it.
The appeals court decision upheld a High Court ruling ordering officials to release the summary. The Foreign Office appealed that ruling, but said Wednesday it would abide by the latest judgment.
“The wider point here is that we stand firmly against torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. We don’t condone, collude in or solicit it,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s spokesman Simon Lewis told reporters following the decision.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband restated the government’s backing for the principle that “if a country shares intelligence with another, that country must agree before its intelligence is released.”
Miliband said the case “has been followed carefully at the highest level in the United States with concern,” and said he had spoken to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the judgment on Tuesday
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