Ministers 'misled' judges over torture evidence

Evidence that a British resident was tortured before being flown to Guantanamo Bay may yet see the light of day after senior judges hearing the case were told yesterday they had been misled by the Government.

The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, argued on Wednesday that national security could be compromised if secret CIA documents detailing the interrogation of Binyam Mohamed were placed in the public domain. His comments came after the High Court refused to order the disclosure of a CIA dossier referring to the treatment of Mr Mohamed, 31, who was arrested as a terrorism suspect. It said that to do so would put the British public at risk because America had threatened to withdraw co-operation in terror cases.

In their ruling, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones said they decided not to release the documents because Mr Miliband believed there was a "real risk" that the potential loss of intelligence co-operation would seriously increase the terror threat faced by the UK. Yesterday, however, the Foreign Secretary told MPs that Washington did not "threaten" to break off co-operation, but had simply affirmed that the sharing of information could be damaged.

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Mr Mohamed, an Ethiopian, was granted refugee status in the UK in 1994. He was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and handed over to US agents. He claims he was secretly flown to Morocco and tortured before being moved to Afghanistan and finally, in 2004, to the US naval base in Cuba, where he remains. All terror charges against him were dropped last year.

He says the evidence against him was based on confessions extracted by torture and ill-treatment – a claim denied by the US – and that British agencies were complicit in his torture.

Last night, his lawyers wrote to the High Court to ask the two judges to reconsider their judgment, arguing that ministers were now denying that disclosure of the CIA dossier threatened joint anti-terror operations. Mr Mohamed's counsel, Dinah Rose, QC, quoted Mr Miliband as saying that no threat to end intelligence-sharing was ever made to Britain by the US.

Mr Mohamed's legal team says it is clear that the perceived threat of non-co-operation was crucial to the court's decision not to release the dossier, even though it was in the public interest to do so. "These admissions by the Foreign Secretary would seem to undermine the whole basis of the court's reluctant decision to refuse to publish those details," said a spokesman.

In the Commons earlier, Mr Miliband dismissed calls to urge the new US administration to disclose information about the treatment of a terror suspect at Guantanamo Bay. He denied the White House had ever threatened to "break off" co-operation, but argued that the mutual trust essential to the sharing of sensitive intelligence would be undermined if Britain insisted on publication. Such a move would "cause real and significant damage to the national security and international relations of this country," he told MPs.

Mr Miliband said he had discussed Mr Mohamed's case with the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, when they met in Washington this week. But he insisted: "I am not going to join a lobbying campaign against the American government for this decision."

Opposition parties accused the Foreign Secretary of striking a "shabby and shady" deal with the White House. Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat spokesman for foreign affairs, said the Government was trying to avoid embarrassing the US by covering up evidence of torture.

"The point at question is not a threat to our security coming from terrorists, but a threat to our security coming from our closest ally," he said. "The Foreign Secretary should have made it clear to our American friends that this country's opposition to torture meant we would have nothing to do with intelligence gathered that way. Instead, the British Government just rolled over in the face of a scarcely credible threat from a friend."

Mr Mohamed has been on hunger strike for a month and is said by his lawyers to be close to death. A US military attorney who saw him at Guantanamo last week said: "He is just skin and bones. The real worry is that he comes out in a coffin."

Karen Buck, the Labour MP for Regent's Park and Kensington North, in whose constituency Mr Mohamed lived, told the Commons he was "very frail and very sick" and called for his urgent repatriation to Britain.

Mr Miliband said: "We are pursuing his return at the highest level, including in discussions with Secretary Clinton and with the appropriate US authorities... we are working as fast and as hard as we can."