Bowing to America’s ‘naked political power’

Suppressing evidence of torture, as the US is asking Britain to do in the Binyam Mohamed case, is a criminal offence

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• • Clive Stafford Smith
  • guardian.co.uk, Monday 3 August 2009 12.30 BST

Over the weekend, the government has identified another way to embarrass itself.

Karen Steyn is the barrister representing David Miliband, who has been arguing that we must suppress evidence of torture in the case of Binyam Mohamed. On Saturday, the high court judges sent the foreign secretary a transcript of their interrogation of Steyn for him to confirm in writing whether he really means what she says.

The issue at stake is whether the government really wants to suppress seven paragraphs that apparently include American admissions that they tortured Mohamed. First, Steyn confirmed that the material that she wanted suppressed had no intelligence value – it did not “conceivably identify anything that is of a national security interest”, it simply identified criminal acts of torture.

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Tags: Binyam Mohamed, British government, CIA, Clive Stafford Smith, David Miliband, Mrs Clinton, suppressing the evidence, torture, United States