By IRNA,
New York : In a significant reversal, the Bush administration has agreed to turn over documents that support allegations by a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that he was tortured while in American custody in Pakistan in early 2002, a British court said in a ruling Friday.
The administration strenuously sought to keep secret the documents about the detainee, Binyam Mohamed, and its changed position came in response to pressure from the British government and the British court, which has indicated that if the defense could not get the documents from the United States, it was inclined to order the British government to do so.
The High Court had ruled on August 21 that the Foreign Office must provide Mohamed with information relating to his time in detention.
His lawyers said the material supported his claim to have been “extraordinarily rendered,” tortured and forced into a confession on terrorism charges.
The court described the American reversal, which came a few days ago, as “welcome” and “significant.”
Mohamed is a British resident, and he was interviewed in Pakistan by British intelligence officials, who expressed concern about the way he was being treated by U.S. military and intelligence officials, the court said in an earlier ruling. The government turned documents in the case over to the Bush administration earlier this year.
The court action was begun by Mohamed’s lawyers to gain access to the documents and so prove his contentions that he was tortured, not only in Pakistan, but later in Afghanistan and in Morocco, where he says he was secretly taken by the CIA.
As the court proceedings progressed, and appeared to be going against the United States, the State Department sent a letter to the court on Aug. 21 saying that it would provide the documents to the convening authority – the senior Pentagon official who decides whether a case should be brought to trial.
But they would only be provided if she requested them, the department’s legal adviser, John Bellinger, said in the letter, major paragraphs of which were included in the court’s 11-page ruling.
The convening authority for the Guantanamo cases is Susan Crawford, a retired military judge. Mohamed is facing a trial on several charges of planning to commit acts of terrorism against the United States, including the detonation of a “dirty bomb.” In the letter, Bellinger also said that documents would not be automatically turned over to Mohamed’s lawyers, and in any case not to his civilian counsel, Clive Stafford Smith. But on Wednesday, the day before a hearing in the case, the State Department sent another letter saying that the documents had been turned over to Crawford.
“This second letter effects a further significant change in the position of the government of the United States,” the court said.
Nevertheless the court said that the demands of the defense team must still be met. The lawyers want to be assured access to the documents before Crawford rules. It also wants some of the redacted information.
In his letter, Bellinger said that information on where Mohamed was held was being edited out of the documents.
Mohamed has charged that in May 2002 he was secretly taken to Morocco by the CIA, where he says he was brutally tortured, including being cut on the chest and his genitals with a razor.
CIA flight logs, uncovered by journalists, support Mohamed’s claim that he was taken to Morocco and held there for more than a year before being flown to the Guantanamo prison camp.
The British government has argued that in the interests of national security it should not be required to release the documents.
The release “would seriously harm the existing intelligence sharing arrangements between the United Kingdom and the United States,” the court said, summarizing the Foreign Ministry’s briefs to the court.
The court said the ministry had failed to weigh the national security interests against “the abhorrence and condemnation accorded to torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”