British Court Orders Release of Information, Censored at U.S. Insistence, Regarding Alleged Mistreatment of U.K. Resident

U.S. intelligence officials interrogating a British terror suspect subjected him to "cruel, inhumane and degrading" treatment in violation of international legal standards, according to a British court ruling.

Britain's Court of Appeal on Wednesday ordered the U.K. government to release seven paragraphs of long-censored information describing how a U.K. resident, initially held in Pakistan as a terrorism suspect, allegedly was mistreated while under American control. David Miliband, Britain's foreign secretary, told Parliament that the U.K. court decided to release the long-withheld information on allegedly abusive U.S. interrogation practices in the wake of a U.S. Federal Court judgment, issued in December. The U.S. judgment had made a "finding of fact" about allegations made by Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born U.K. resident who claimed to have been mistreated by U.S. and foreign interrogators at several locations. The U.S. court judgment essentially deemed Mohamed's claims of mistreatment to be credible. Mohamed eventually ended up at the U.S. terrorist detention facility in , Cuba, but was subsequently released following pleas from U.K. authorities. He now is back in Britain.

What's odd about the once-censored material that was released today is how relatively tame it appears to be─particularly when compared with the lurid allegations of mistreatment that the December U.S. court decision found credible. According to a verbatim version of the newly released material published by the Foreign Office what the U.K., and, evidently American, government fought for years to keep secret is that Mohamed, while imprisoned under U.S. control in Pakistan in April 2002, was "intentionally subjected to continuous sleep deprivation." The newly uncensored material continues: "It was reported that combined with the sleep deprivation, threats and inducements were made to him. His fears of being removed from United States custody and "disappearing" were played upon ... It was reported that the stress brought about by these deliberate tactics was increased by him being shackled in his interviews."

The newly released material notes that, "It could readily be contended to be at the very least cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities." It adds that Britain's principal counterterrorism agency, identified as the Security Service (but more popularly known as MI5), received reports describing what was being done to Mohamed.

Noteworthy is the fact that in the Dec. 16, 2009, judgment in which she assesses Binyam Mohamed as a believable witnesses, Judge Gladys Kessler of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, gives credit to far more "harrowing" (to use the judge's term), if not grotesque, allegations of mistreatment that Mohamed alleges occurred during other stages in his detention. The American judge cites allegations by Mohamed that while in custody at a detention facility in Morocco, he was repeatedly and severely beaten by Moroccan interrogators, who made it clear they were working with the U.S. Subsequently, once a month over a period of 18 months, Mohamed claimed that interrogators cut his genitals with a scalpel. Later, Mohamed claimed, he was deprived of sleep for days on end by having loud music being blasted at him through headphones while he was handcuffed. Later still, Mohamed said he was returned to U.S. custody in Afghanistan, where sleep deprivation continued. Judge Kessler said she found Mohamed's allegations bore "several indicia of reliability", particularly the fact that it was "extraordinarily detailed." She noted that the U.S. "Government does not dispute this evidence."

In his statement to Parliament, Miliband explained that the reason that the British government had, before Kessler's ruling, fought so hard to stop the U.K. courts from releasing some of the more mild details of Mohamed's alleged mistreatment was to protect what he called the "control principle." According to Miliband, this principle, which"states that intelligence belonging to another country should not be released without its agreement, underpins the flow of intelligence between the U.S. and the U.K.." A U.K. government source acknowledged that what was being argued here was that if the British courts forced the British government to release information about American intelligence operations or practices, then this could damage the historically close cooperation between U.S. and British agencies like the CIA and FBI and Britain's MI5 and MI6.

Miliband said that the U.S. government agreed with this argument, which initially was voiced to British authorities by the administration of George W. Bush but then was reaffirmed by the Obama administration. had "been followed carefully at the highest levels in the U.S. system with a great deal of concern. Recent events have shown the importance of the U.S.-U.K. intelligence relationship in the fight against terrorism; equally the determination of the U.S. authorities to protect the confidentiality of their intelligence has been absolute throughout this case."

A State Department official e-mailed the following statement to Declassified in response: "We have had a number of conversations with HMG [Her Majesty's Government, i.e., the U.K. government] regarding this issue. The Secretary has talked with Foreign Minister Miliband about it on multiple occasions, including yesterday. I'll defer to the White House on our reaction to the final court decision."