Statement demanded on torture claim

Feb 4 2009

Former shadow home secretary David Davis has demanded a Commons statement from the Government on accusations that British agents had tortured a man held in Guantanamo Bay.

He also urged the Government to address an alleged US threat to withdraw intelligence sharing relations with Britain if details of the Binyam Mohamed case are released.

Mr Davis, raising a point of order, described it as "a matter of utmost national importance".

He told the Commons: "At 1.45pm today Lord Justice Thomas issued an astonishing ruling in the case of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident currently being held at Guantanamo bay and who has made an accusation of British involvement in torture inflicted on him while held in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Morocco.

"The ruling implies that torture has taken place in the Mohamed case, that British agencies may have been complicit, and most important of all, that the United States Government has threatened our High Courts that if it releases this information, the US Government will withdraw its intelligence co-operation with the United Kingdom on matters of security.

"The judge rules that there is a strong public interest that this information is put in the public domain even though it is politically embarrassing."

Earlier, in a joint judgment involving terror suspect Binyam Mohamed, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones launched a scathing attack on the US authorities over their suppression of evidence of torture allegations.

But the judges decided not to release the evidence because the US had threatened to withdraw cooperation over terrorist intelligence and "the public of the United Kingdom would be put at risk".

The judges said they had no reason to anticipate the US would threaten to "reconsider its intelligence sharing relationship, when all the considerations in relation to open justice pointed to us providing a limited but important summary of the reports".

In another part of the ruling, the judges said they had been informed by lawyers for Foreign Secretary David Miliband that the threat to withdraw co-operation remained even under President Barack Obama's new administration.