May 14, 2009
LONDON —
Renewing a warning given to Britain while President George W. Bush was in office, the Obama administration has threatened to curb the exchange of intelligence information between the countries if a British court makes public the details of the interrogation techniques used against a former Guantánamo Bay detainee who claims he was tortured.
In a letter forwarded to the High Court in London by British government lawyers this month, the Obama administration said the flow of information could be affected if the court made public a summary prepared by the Bush administration for Britain’s Foreign Office on the treatment of the former detainee, Binyam Mohamed. Mr. Mohamed, 30, a citizen of Ethiopia who was arrested as a suspected terrorist in Pakistan in 2002, was released from Guantánamo and flown to Britain three months ago.
{snip}
Lawyers involved in the court case are bound by a court order not to disclose the contents of crucial documents, including the letter threatening curbs on intelligence cooperation, at least until the judges decide whether to order the publication of the summary of Mr. Mohamed’s treatment. That decision is expected within weeks. But the lawyers confirmed the accuracy of the quotations from the letter that appeared in The Washington Times.
The letter warned that if the British government “is unable to protect information we provide to it, even if that inability is caused by your judicial system, we will necessarily have to review with the greatest care the sensitivity of information we can provide in the future.”
The letter also said the “seven paragraphs at issue are based upon classified information shared between our countries,” and that “public disclosure of this information reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage to the United Kingdom’s national security” if the United States withheld intelligence information in the future.
read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/world/europe/15britain.html?_r=1&ref=europe&pagewanted=print