Is The Obama Administration Blackmailing The UK?

The Bush administration had supposedly followed this case closely and applied pressure to the UK to prevent the details of the case from being released. In an unexpected twist, Lord Justice Thomas and Justice Lloyd Jones claim that lawyers for the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, told them that the threat by the United States still applied under the Obama administration; an allegation that the Foreign Secretary denies.

According to the BBC the judges originally wanted “the full details of the alleged torture to be published in the interests of safeguarding the rule of law, free speech and democratic accountability.” Yet in a ruling today the court decided to suppress the information; purportedly the judges were persuaded to change their opinion upon being convinced that it was not in the public’s best interest as the US could then "inflict on the citizens of the United Kingdom a very considerable increase in the dangers they face.”

The case in question involves a 31 year old Ethiopian detainee named Binyam Mohamed. Legally Mohamed is a permanent resident of the UK but he has spent the last four years in Guantanamo accused of collaborating with the Al Qaeda terrorist network and conspiring to attack civilians. The British citizen claims that he was tortured in Pakistan, Morocco, and Afghanistan between 2002 and 2004.

The Ethiopian national maintains that he has documents that support the fact that the evidence against him was obtained through torture, reports the BBC; but the information inciting this international dilemma are located in a 25 line summary report by the US government to the British security services about the detention and treatment of the detainee.

A spokesperson of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown claims that the nation’s leader has no prior knowledge of a threat of this sort from the Obama administration.

By: Alberto Ramos Cordero