U.K. Court Orders Disclosure of Binyam Mohamed’s Torture Allegations

A British High Court on Friday ordered that previously redacted text concerning the alleged torture of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed must be made public.

This is a breakthrough for Mohamed, because while he claims that he was tortured while detained in Pakistan and interrogated by U.S. and British agents, he’s never been able to obtain evidence from the U.K. government that he says will prove his allegations. Meanwhile, the British Foreign Secretary had urged the British court not to make Mohamed’s specific torture claims public, citing a risk to relations between the United Kingdom and the United States, suggesting that the U.S. had urged him to keep the charges hidden.

Friday’s ruling, reported by JURIST over the weekend, reversed the previous decisions to redact Mohamed’s allegations, saying that “the public interest in making the paragraphs public is overwhelming” and “the risk to national security judged objectively on the evidence is not a serious one.”  The court’s earlier opinion therefore will be re-issued with the paragraphs restored.

More details on the court’s decision can be found at JURIST, and more on the strange and difficult case of Binyam Mohamed, who was released from Guantanamo and returned to the United Kingdom last February, can be found here and here.

The U.S. government tried to convince Mohamed to sign an agreement upon his release promising not to discuss his treatment by U.S. authorities. He refused.