The seven paragraphs that shook US-UK ties

A British court has ordered the publication of previously secret information that appears to reveal the UK government's complicity with the U.S. in the torture of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident who was imprisoned by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The decision by the English Court of Appeals affirmed an earlier High Court ruling that ordered the release of seven paragraphs that the British government had sought to suppress because the administration of President Obama "explicitly threatened that publishing the information would harm the intelligence-sharing relationship between the two nations." British Foreign Secretary David Miliband argued that the publication of those seven paragraphs would endanger Britain's national security. But, as the Court of Appeals noted in their decision, the information at issue had already been placed in the public domain through a U.S. court decision in November 2009. In that case the judge, after reviewing extensive evidence of Mohamed's allegations of torture, noted that the government did "not challenge or deny the accuracy of Binyam Mohamed's story of brutal treatment."