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UK court OKs publishing secret torture material

* Says information on how Binyam was treated in Guantanamo Bay should not be kept secret

LONDON: More secret information relating to the alleged torture of a former Guantanamo Bay detainee should be disclosed, Britain’s High Court ruled on Thursday.

Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed claims the US and Britain were complicit in his torture in Pakistan and Morocco, and his lawyers are pressing for Britain to release a seven-paragraph summary of US intelligence files on his detention – a document he claims proves Britain’s complicity. Thursday’s court ruling concerns four paragraphs in an earlier court judgment that the government says reveals the content of the secret material.

Lawyers for Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband have argued that releasing the sensitive information would harm Britain’s national security. Lord Justice John Thomas and Justice David Lloyd Jones said the paragraphs, which relate to how Binyam was treated while in custody, should not be kept secret. “Of itself, the treatment to which Mr Mohamed was subjected could never properly be described in a democracy as ‘a secret’ or an ‘intelligence secret’ or ‘a summary of classified intelligence,” they said in their ruling.

The British government had also argued that American authorities would be reluctant to share security intelligence with Britain if there was a risk that confidential information would end up in the public domain.

Despite the court’s ruling, the controversial paragraphs cannot be made public immediately because the government has already said it is taking the matter to an appeals court next month. “We have repeatedly made clear that it is not for the UK to release US intelligence,” a statement from the Foreign Office said. ap

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