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Bowing to US's 'naked political power'
Over the weekend, the government has identified another way to embarrass itself.
Karen Steyn is the barrister representing David Miliband, who has been arguing that we must suppress evidence of torture in the case of Binyam Mohamed. On Saturday, the high court judges sent the foreign secretary a transcript of their interrogation of Steyn for him to confirm in writing whether he really means what she says.
The issue at stake is whether the government really wants to suppress seven paragraphs that apparently include American admissions that they tortured Mohamed. First, Steyn confirmed that the material that she wanted suppressed had no intelligence value–it did not "conceivably identify anything that is of a national security interest", it simply identified criminal acts of torture.
Second, Steyn confirmed that the US had "threatened" the UK with sanctions if the material was released, though she did not like the word: "It is entirely right," she said, "there has been that explicit statement of consequences."