British High Court rejects U.S./British cover-up of torture evidence
Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com
(updated below - Update II)
There is a vital development -- a new ruling from the British High Court -- in a story about which I've written many times before: the extraordinary joint British/U.S. effort to cover up the brutal torture which Binyam Mohamed suffered at the hands of the CIA while in Pakistan and while he was "rendered" by the U.S. to various countries. While Mohamed, a British resident, was in American custody, the CIA told British intelligence agents exactly what was done to him, and those British agents recorded what they were told in various memos. Last year, the British High Court ruled that Mohamed -- who was then at Guantanamo -- had the right to obtain those documents from the British intelligence service in order to prove that statements he made to the CIA were the by-product of coercion.
The High Court's original ruling in Mohamed's favor contained seven paragraphs which described the torture to which Mohamed was subjected. It has been previously reported that those paragraphs contain descriptions of abuse so brutal that not even our own American media could dispute that it constitutes "torture":
The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed's genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, "is very far down the list of things they did," the official said.
But before the decision was released, the Court decided to redact those seven paragraphs. And in February, 2009, it issued a new ruling explaining its reason to conceal those paragraphs: the Bush administration had issued what the Court called a "threat" that the U.S. would reduce or even eliminate intelligence-sharing with the British if those paragraphs were made public. In other words, British officials needed a reason to tell the High Court that British national security would be jeopardized if those paragraphs were made public, and Bush officials obliged by threatening that the U.S. would withhold information about terrorist plots aimed at British citizens in the future if this information were disclosed. As the High Court summarized in its new ruling issued yesterday.
(Continued here.)
Salon.com
(updated below - Update II)
There is a vital development -- a new ruling from the British High Court -- in a story about which I've written many times before: the extraordinary joint British/U.S. effort to cover up the brutal torture which Binyam Mohamed suffered at the hands of the CIA while in Pakistan and while he was "rendered" by the U.S. to various countries. While Mohamed, a British resident, was in American custody, the CIA told British intelligence agents exactly what was done to him, and those British agents recorded what they were told in various memos. Last year, the British High Court ruled that Mohamed -- who was then at Guantanamo -- had the right to obtain those documents from the British intelligence service in order to prove that statements he made to the CIA were the by-product of coercion.
The High Court's original ruling in Mohamed's favor contained seven paragraphs which described the torture to which Mohamed was subjected. It has been previously reported that those paragraphs contain descriptions of abuse so brutal that not even our own American media could dispute that it constitutes "torture":
The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed's genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, "is very far down the list of things they did," the official said.
But before the decision was released, the Court decided to redact those seven paragraphs. And in February, 2009, it issued a new ruling explaining its reason to conceal those paragraphs: the Bush administration had issued what the Court called a "threat" that the U.S. would reduce or even eliminate intelligence-sharing with the British if those paragraphs were made public. In other words, British officials needed a reason to tell the High Court that British national security would be jeopardized if those paragraphs were made public, and Bush officials obliged by threatening that the U.S. would withhold information about terrorist plots aimed at British citizens in the future if this information were disclosed. As the High Court summarized in its new ruling issued yesterday.
(Continued here.)
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