With friends like these.... - Snowboarding Forum

PaoloSmythe · 02-04-2009, 11:19 AM

Quote:

Two senior judges today launched a scathing attack on the US authorities over their suppression of evidence of allegations of torture of a British resident....
judges decided not to release the evidence because the US had threatened to withdraw cooperation over terrorist intelligence and "the public of the United Kingdom would be put at risk".

In a joint judgment involving terror suspect Binyam Mohamed, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones said: "In the light of the long history of the common law and democracy which we share with the United States it was in our view difficult to conceive that a democratically elected and accountable government could possibly have any rational objection to placing into the public domain such a summary of what its own officials reported, as to how a detainee was treated by them and which made no disclosure of sensitive intelligence matters.

"Indeed we did not consider that a democracy governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials ... relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be.

"We had no reason ... to anticipate there would be made a threat of the gravity of the kind made by the United States Government that it would reconsider its intelligence sharing relationship, when all the considerations in relation to open justice pointed to us providing a limited but important summary of the reports."

In another part of the ruling, the judges said they had been informed by lawyers for Foreign Secretary David Miliband that the threat to withdraw co-operation remained even under President Barack Obama's new administration.

Mohamed, 31, was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and has been held by the US at Guantanamo Bay since September 2004. He alleges the evidence against him is based on confessions extracted by torture and ill treatment - claims denied by the US authorities.

"Championing the rule of law, not suppressing it, is the cornerstone of a democracy."

In the opinion of the Foreign Secretary there is a real risk that, if the redacted paragraphs were restored, then "the US Government, by its review of the shared intelligence arrangements, could inflict on the citizens of the United Kingdom a very considerable increase in the dangers they face at a time when a serious terrorist threat still pertains".

well thank you very much. evidence has come up in the defence of someone alleged to have been terroristic, but its use would result in the sharing of intelligence being withdrawn between our two great allied nations.

it is abhorrent to me, that the nation who claims to fight for freedom and democracy the most, would seek to remove judicial freedom from a single person, and then WORSE STILL, threaten the welfare of an entire nation in defence of its own illegal activity!

the result: America has basically admitted to its illtreatment of the detained person; has committed Obama to a policy of blackmailing his nation's supposed closest ally; and has rendered the UK complicit to the torture carried out, by obliging it to yield to the black mail.

so.... what aspect of this sorry state of affairs is in anyway defensible or limited to every seppo's favourite scapegoat.... Bush? 'change' my arse.

Senior judges attack US refusal to disclose evidence - Home News, UK - The Independent

MunkySpunk · 02-04-2009, 12:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PaoloSmythe

well thank you very much. evidence has come up in the defence of someone alleged to have been terroristic, but its use would result in the sharing of intelligence being withdrawn between our two great allied nations.

They skip this chapter in school? Lusitania Controversy

Feel the way you want, I just hope it's not surprise, because I'm not feeling it either. 'Jaded' would be a better descriptor.

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