UK loses secret evidence defence in Guantanamo case
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
London, May 4, IRNA -- The British government cannot use secret evidence to defend a legal case brought by six former Guantanamo detainees over torture allegation, the Court of Appeal ruled Tuesday.
Three senior judges dismissed an attempt by MI5 security service and MI6 intelligence agency to suppress evidence of their alleged complicity in the torture and secret transfer of British residents to Guantánamo Bay.
In a damning judgement, Master of the Rolls Lord Neuberger, Britain’s second most senior judge, said that a “clear stand” must be taken.
Accepting the case of the security and intelligence agencies would amount to "undermining one of most fundamental principles" of common law, Neuberger said.
"In our view the principle that a litigant should be able to see and hear all the evidence which is seen and heard by a court determining his case is so fundamental, so embedded in the common law,” he said.
The six former British detainees are suing MI5, MI6, the Foreign Office, the Home Office and attorney general for playing an alleged part in, or for failing to stop, their detention and ill-treatment in the US camp.
The ruling is the second by the Court of Appeal this year against attempts to keep secret material out of open courts. The last ruling forced the government to publish a summary of what UK intelligence officials knew of the ill-treatment of one of the claimants, Binyam Mohamed.
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