Truth and Silence

US moves to suppress evidence in Gitmo trial

THE US has threatened to stop sharing intelligence with Britain if information on a British terrorism detainee in Guantanamo Bay is made public.
The High Court in London ruled on Wednesday that details of a legal challenge, brought by Binyam Mohamed, a British resident held at the American base, must not be released because a withdrawal of intelligence co-operation by the US would lead to a "considerable increase" in the dangers Britain faced from terrorism.
But the court expressed dismay that a democracy "governed by the rule of law" would seek to suppress evidence "relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be".
A statement by Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones that lawyers for the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, had made clear that the threat by the US represented too great a risk to national security to be ignored had caused alarm in Britain.
British newspapers pointed out that the threat to re-evaluate the sharing of intelligence between Britain and America had emerged just 24 hours after Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, made much of the "special relationship" between the two countries.
The judges' statements reveal that top-secret documents, which form the linchpin of the case, refer to "torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment".
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