by Andy Worthington
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
www.andyworthington.co.uk
26 May 2009
For the Guardian’s Comment is free, “More twists in the tale of Binyam Mohamed” is an article I wrote looking at recent developments in the case of British resident, former Guantánamo prisoner and torture victim Binyam Mohamed, following another inconclusive day in the High Court, where his lawyers have been engaged in a nine-month struggle to try to persuade the judges to order the release of documents relating to the British government’s knowledge of Binyam’s torture, in the face of repeated claims by the Foreign Office that disclosure would cause irreparable damage to the intelligence-sharing relationship between the US and the UK.
Unresolved were questions about the identity of the author of a recent letter reiterating the US position, but in my article I was more concerned to mention another recent development that threatens to cause fresh problems for the embattled FCO: the revelation last weekend, by David Rose, that a British spy had visited Mohamed in Morocco, and the curious and not altogether reassuring suppression, on Wednesday, of a meeting of the Commons Committee on Foreign Affairs, which was supposed to have heard testimony from Binyam’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, regarding this extraordinarily significant revelation. Also included are excerpts from Stafford Smith’s letter to the Committee, in response to what appears to be nothing more than an attempt to postpone the inevitable.
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed, and see here for my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009. Visit his website at: www.andyworthington.co.uk.
see
Pingback: US Torture Under Scrutiny In British Courts by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Ex Gitmo inmate Binyam Mohamed speaks publicly for first time « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Secrets of CIA ‘ghost flights’ to be revealed « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Revealed: Identity Of Guantánamo Torture Victim Rendered Through Diego Garcia by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad
Pingback: Did Hillary Clinton Threaten UK Over Binyam Mohamed Torture Disclosure? by Andy Worthington « Dandelion Salad