The British government managed to get a slightly watered down ruling in the case of Binyam Mohamed, a British citizen who was tortured by MI5.
But the gist of the ruling, ordering the government to detail the torture, remains:
The government launched a successful last-minute bid to persuade the court of appeal to erase the most damning details of MI5′s complicity in torture from its decision in the Binyam Mohamed case – but has been unable to suppress a letter that details some of the contents of the original draft ruling.
On Monday, Jonathan Sumption QC wrote to the court warning that the paragraph in question was “likely to receive more public attention than any other parts of the judgments”.
This, Sumption pointed out, was because the paragraph would state that MI5 did not operate in a culture that respected human rights or renounced “coercive interrogation techniques”.
The letter also reveals that the judgment, before being rewritten, said this was particularly true of the MI5 officer known as Witness B who gave evidence in the case – and that this man’s conduct was characteristic of MI5 as a whole.
Furthermore, the letter shows, the judges originally ruled that MI5 officers had “deliberately misled” the Intelligence and Security Committee, the body of MPs and peers supposed to oversee its work, on the question of coercive interrogations, and that this “culture of suppression” reflected its dealings with the committee, the foreign secretary and the court.
Finally, the letter makes clear that the court ruled MI5′s culture of suppression “penetrates the service to such a degree” that it undermines any government assurance based upon information that comes from MI5 itself.
Gorilla says: “We’re still waiting here for the same or better justice!”
