Yesterday the High Court held in a judgment that details of Leigh Day & Co client Binyam Mohamed’s ill-treatment at the hands of the Americans and Pakistanis should not be published because the US authorities had threatened to withhold intelligence sharing with the UK. The Judges stated that they had been informed that this threat remained even after the change of administration in the US. They were deeply critical of this stance which undermined the rule of law solely for the purpose of preventing political embarrassment. However, the US threat to downgrade its intelligence relationship with the UK meant that it would threaten UK national security if those details were released.
In an astonishing sequence of events following the judgment, the Foreign Secretary conceded that the new regime had not actually been approached, that in fact no threat had ever been made by the US.
These admissions by the Foreign Secretary would seem to undermine the whole basis of the Court’s judgment refusing to publish those details.
Leigh Day & Co have accordingly this afternoon made an application to the Court requesting that the judgment is reopened and the case reconsidered in light of these new facts.
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