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Inching closer to the truth

One would hope that the old adage that the truth will eventually be out, will hopefully come to pass with regard to revealing, in full, the CIA's renditioning and torture practices - but not in the US, but via the decision in an English court case.

Scott Horton explains in "CIA Efforts to Keep Torture Secrets Suffer a Key Loss in British High Court" in Harper's Magazine:

"Britain’s High Court issued a decision on Friday directing that classified information shared by the CIA with British intelligence services concerning the torture and mistreatment of a former Guantánamo prisoner be made public. The case involves a 31-year-old Ethiopian, Binyam Mohamed, who was seized and held in the CIA’s extraordinary renditions program in Pakistan and Morocco before his transfer to the prison at Guantánamo. He was charged with conspiracy, with the charges apparently resting on statements by Abu Zubaydah, a prisoner now acknowledged to have been tortured by U.S. government officials. In October 2008, the Bush Administration withdrew the charges against Binyam Mohamed and started the process leading to his repatriation to Britain.

In British court proceedings, Binyam Mohamed described his gruesome torture following his seizure by the CIA and movement within its renditions system. He recounted how his penis was slashed with a scalpel by torturers in Morocco, and he noted the presence of British and American intelligence personnel throughout the process. In defending the process, the British Government was forced to acknowledge that it held intelligence reports from the American CIA that corroborated Binyam Mohamed’s accounts of torture. However, Foreign Secretary David Miliband strenuously objected to disclosure of this information, pointing to the “special relationship” between U.S. and U.K. intelligence services and Britain’s commitment not to disclose classified information secured from American counterparts without their permission. Miliband pointed to communications with the U.S. State Department noting that disclosure of the information would harm U.S. relations with British intelligence."

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