Leigh Day & Co today return to Court in the long-running case of Binyam Mohamed. The Foreign Secretary is launching his appeal against the judgment of the High Court in October that Mr Mohamed and the public at large are entitled to see the Court’s findings as to the abuse meted out to him by the CIA in Pakistan.
The UK Government is seeking to cover up the evidence his torture and the factual findings of the High Court in this regard. The controversial evidence comes in the form of seven paragraphs of the Court’s original August 2008 judgment. The paragraphs summarised the ill-treatment of Mr Mohamed which had been detailed to the Security Services in telegrams from the CIA.
The Security and Intelligence Services insisted that the paragraphs were removed prior to publication of the Court’s judgment. The Court agreed to the removal of the paragraphs as a temporary measure and indicated that they would return to the matter at a later date.
In a judgment in October 2009 the High Court did just that, deciding that its original judgment be re-instated in full.
The Government had argued that the United States would reduce intelligence sharing with the UK because the information summarised in the paragraphs had originated from information provided by the CIA. The Court, having studied letters from the CIA and White House security advisors, found that Mr Milliband was exaggerating the position. The Obama administration had not repeated the direct threats to the UK made by the Bush administration. Furthermore it was fanciful that President Obama, having already ordered the publication of full details of the torture and ill-treatment sanctioned under the Bush regime, would react so violently to further details of US torture being put in the public domain by a Court.
It was accepted by the Government that there was nothing which could possibly be described as ‘security sensitive’ or ‘secret’ in the seven paragraphs. The Government’s sole argument was that there was a principle that information provided by one country’s intelligence agency to another should not be published without the consent of the originating party – in this case the CIA. This principle has been dubbed the “Control Principle”.
In a dramatic twist this morning however, Counsel for the Government for the first time argued that the seven paragraphs actually contained information that was security sensitive, rather than just embarrassing.
It seems that the Government’s hand may have been forced in this regard because, as Leigh Day & Co had pointed out in recent correspondence, the Government has actually breached the supposedly sacrosanct “Control Principle” on numerous occasions. The Government has been quite happy to reveal information which originated from the CIA where it has suited its case.
The irony of the situation is that, although the Government has a taken a polar opposite view from that which it took for over a year, neither Mr Mohamed, the press, the public or their lawyers are able to understand how or why it can do this because, we are told, it is all too secret and risks damaging national security.
Richard Stein of Leigh Day & Co said:
“The vigour with which the Government is now fighting these proceedings stands in stark contrast to the previous overconfidence it showed. It appeared to assume that by deploying “national security” arguments it could easily suppress political embarrassment. I hope that the Court of Appeal will see through this desperate last minute attempt to shift the goalposts. Full publication of the Court’s original judgment will be invaluable to Mr Mohamed as public vindication of his claims and as part of his rehabilitation from the scars of the torture he was subjected to.”
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