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Binyam Mohamed lawyer says torture details withheld from Obama

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] Information redacted from a British High Court decision released last week has been withheld from US President Barack Obama and may hold key information about British involvement in the alleged torture of Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed, according to a letter sent by Mohamed's lawyer to Obama. The letter, sent Monday by Reprieve director Clive Stafford Smith, was accompanied by an attachment purporting to demonstrate the extent to which the information presented to Obama by the US Department of Defense (DOD) has been censored. According to Smith, the censored information would reveal the "truly medieval ways" in which Mohamed was tortured and reflect "specific admissions by his abusers." Smith urged Obama to order the DOD to disclose the evidence, which may have been withheld in order to protect the president politically. On Tuesday, the two British judges who authored last week's decision agreed to reopen the case after Mohamed's lawyers challenged the order that the torture evidence remain classified. UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, David Miliband, who has denied claims that US pressure led to the censoring of released information in Mohamed's case, confirmed Wednesday that British diplomats have been given permission to visit him in Guantanamo. The delegation, to be accompanied by a British police doctor, is to prepare for Mohamed's return to Britain pending review by the Obama administration. At issue in Mohamad's case were several paragraphs describing the conditions and circumstances of his imprisonment, redacted from the High Court's judgment in its August 2008 ruling that the UK Foreign Office must turn over evidence essential to Mohamed's defense. Mohamed asserts that after he was arrested in Pakistan and turned over to US officials, he was then transferred to Moroccan agents who tortured him. He was later transferred to Guantanamo Bay in 2004. In December, he asked the UK government to ensure that photographic evidence of his alleged torture be preserved.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on February 12, 2009 (boomark / email).