US attacks UK court over torture claim case

US attacks UK court over torture claim case
By Daniel Dombey in Washington and James Blitz in London
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: February 10 2010 21:46 | Last updated: February 11 2010 00:35
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0c591402-168d-11df-bf44-00144feab49a.html


The White House has criticised a British court decision to publish secret information about allegations of torture by US officials, stating that the move “will complicate the confidentiality of the intelligence sharing relationship between the UK and US”.

In a defeat for the British government, the Court of Appeal on Wednesday ruled that a seven-paragraph account of the alleged torture of Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian national, in Pakistan in 2002 should be published.

The summary, put on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website on Wednesday, details how Mr Mohamed was shackled, threatened and subjected to sleep deprivation by his interrogators. The description of Mr Mohamed’s treatment was drawn up by British judges in August 2008 after they were given access to more than 40 US intelligence documents.

The documents had been passed to the UK intelligence agencies MI5 and MI6, which were concerned about whether Mr Mohamed was a threat to national security.

It also emerged on Wednesday that the Court of Appeal’s judgment was altered after a top Government lawyer protested over the strength of a judge’s “exceptionally damaging” criticism of MI5 in the Mohamed case.

Jonathan Sumption, counsel for the foreign secretary, wrote a letter to the Appeal Court on Monday after seeing a draft copy of the judgment. He said the draft would be read as a court statement “that the Security Service [MI5] does not in fact operate a culture that respects human rights or abjures participation in coercive interrogation techniques”, that MI5 officials had “misled the Intelligence and Security Committee” and had a “culture of suppression”.

The judgment published on Wednesday did not contain the passages objected to by Mr Sumption, leading to accusations that it had been watered down.

Intelligence sharing between the US and the UK, along with nations such as Canada and Australia, has been vital to the alliance between English-speaking developed countries since the second world war.

The White House said it was “deeply disappointed with the court’s judgment” and that the move could affect relations between British and US intelligence agencies. A spokesman for President Barack Obama added: “We shared this information in confidence and with certain expectations.

“As we warned, the court’s judgment will complicate the confidentiality of our intelligence-sharing relationship with the UK.”