Media groups win battle against British govt in case of former Guantanamo detainee

Media groups win battle against UK govt

LONDON — Media groups won a legal battle against the British government on Wednesday when judges agreed to reconsider their previous ruling to keep information about a former Guantanamo detainee’s alleged torture secret.

The case focused on intelligence discussions between the United States and Britain involving the alleged torture of former British resident Binyam Mohamed.

Media lawyers sued for the disclosure of redacted information they say could show that the British government knew more than it has admitted about Mohamed’s treatment and appealed to have justices reopen or reconsider their previous judgment to keep the information secret.

On Wednesday, High Court justices said they would reconsider the judgment keeping the information secret and give a reason for that reconsideration at a later court hearing. The issue of the redacted information was expected to be decided in the coming weeks.

Lord Justice John Thomas and Justice Lloyd Jones of Britain’s High Court ruled in February to keep the material and judgment secret but they criticized the British government for wanting to keep it secret. The justices they had to bow to claims that the material could hurt Britain’s intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States but also said keeping it secret amounted to concealing “evidence of serious wrongdoing by the United States.”

The case was reopened after media lawyers argued that the British government had based its claims on comments by the Bush administration and had not discussed the issue with officials in the new U.S. administration.

President Barack Obama’s administration decided last month to make public legal memos authorizing the use of harsh interrogation methods but not to prosecute CIA interrogators who followed the advice in the memos.

They gave the British government until May 15 to file additional evidence on why the redacted information should not be released. Media groups say it could show that Britain, despite repeated denials, knew that the CIA had sent Mohamed to Morocco where severe interrogation techniques were used to extract information.

An attorney for the British government — Treasury lawyer David Mackie — sent the justices a letter Wednesday from an official in the Obama administration who said the disclosure of the information could still harm both U.S. and U.K. national security.

The U.S. official, who was not named, said while the Obama administration has moved to release the legal memos that allowed harsher interrogation techniques, no mention has yet been made of countries that helped the United States.

“The United States continues to preserve the secrecy of such information as critical to our national security,” the letter read.

The official also said public disclosure of the redacted information could likely result in serious damage to U.K. and U.S. national security.

“(If Britain) is unable to protect information we provide to it, we will necessarily have to review with the greatest care the sensitivity of information we can provide,” the U.S. letter said.

Mohamed — an Ethiopian who moved to Britain as a teenager — was arrested as a terror suspect in 2002 in Karachi by Pakistani forces. He says he was tortured in Pakistan and later sent to Morocco where interrogators — it isn’t clear from which country — sliced his penis with a scalpel and brutally abused him before he was transferred to Afghanistan and then to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in 2004.

No country has taken responsibility for his transfer from Pakistan to Morocco. The United States has refused to account for Mohamed’s whereabouts for 18 months but has previously denied sending terror suspects to countries with track records of torture.

Mohamed was released from Guantanamo in February and has since been living at an undisclosed location in Britain. He has said questions put to him in Morocco could have only come from British intelligence agents and also alleges that the CIA transferred him to Morocco, then Afghanistan and then to Guantanamo Bay.

“We’re over the first hurdle if they’ve decided to reopen the judgment,” said Geoffrey Robertson, the lawyer representing the international media. “The next question is whether they will reinstate the redacted information.”

The appeal to reopen the judgment and to disclose the redacted material was launched by several media organizations, including The Associated Press. Other media groups involved in Wednesday’s hearing were Guardian News and Media Ltd., the British Broadcasting Corp., Times Newspapers Ltd., Independent News and Media Ltd., the Press Association, The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Index on Censorship.