Miliband bids to keep 'torture' case details secret

The Foreign Secretary is to ask Court of Appeal to block disclosure of intelligence material in the case of west London former terror detainee Binyam Mohamed. David Miliband is embroiled in an unprecedented legal clash with two High Court judges who want to publish basic details of what is said to have happened to Mr Mohamed, of north Kensingrton, at the hands of the CIA.

Last month, during the latest of many hearings in the case, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones said they were not trying to give away "American secrets".

The judges want to re-insert into a judgment already handed down seven short paragraphs of admissions allegedly made by the CIA to the British security service relating to ill-treatment suffered by the former Guantanamo detainee while held by the Americans in Pakistan.

In their latest ruling on the issue on November 19, the judges said: "Of itself, the treatment to which Mr Mohamed was subjected could never properly be described in a democracy as 'a secret' or an 'intelligence secret' or 'a summary of classified intelligence'."

The two judges had redacted passages from their first judgment after the Foreign Secretary warned disclosure could jeopardise the UK's intelligence-sharing relationship with the US.

At the November hearing they said the redacted material should be put back in because it was "essential" to their reasoning and was no threat to national security.

They repeated their finding that "what is contained in those seven redacted paragraphs gives rise to an arguable case of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment".

Mr Miliband no longer objects to two of the paragraphs, but is asking the appeal judges to block the remaining material.

The Foreign Secretary's appeal is being heard by three of the country's most senior judges - the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge; the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, and the President of the Queen's Bench Division, Sir Anthony May.

UKPA