Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, defended the non-disclosure of US intelligence in the case of the alleged CIA torture of a British resident now in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp insisting it would damage national security. In a Parliamentary statement, Miliband also rejected suggestions that the US had threatened to “break off” cooperation with the UK if it had made public documents on the US treatment of 30-year old Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed. The Foreign Secretary was responding to a High Court ruling that evidence of how the UK resident held in the Guantanamo Bay was tortured, and what MI5 security agency knew about it, must remain secret because of serious threats from the US.
The judges Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones made clear they were deeply unhappy with their decision, but said they had no alternative as a result of an earlier statement by Miliband that if it was disclosed the US would stop sharing intelligence and would threaten the UK’s national security. Later reports suggested that the Foreign Office had initiated an alleged cover-up of Britain’s complicity in the torture by apparently soliciting the letter from the US State Department that forced British judges to block the disclosure of the CIA files.