London - The British government Thursday defended the suppression of secret service evidence relating to Guantanamo Bay detainees while insisting that Britain would "never condone, authorize or cooperate in torture."Foreign Secretary David Miliband told parliament that the publication of highly classified material provided by the US could cause "real and significant damage" to Britain's security and harm relations with the US.
But Miliband denied that the US had "threatened" to cut off intelligence cooperation if any of the evidence should enter the public domain.
He was referring to a ruling by two British High Court judges Wednesday to withhold US evidence on the treatment of Binyam Mohamed, a 30-year-old Ethiopian who has alleged torture at Guantanamo Bay.
The judges revealed that pressure had been exerted on them not to publish relevant passages of a verdict relating to Mohamed's case.
The affair has caused uproar in Britain where civil rights campaigners have accused the US government of "bullying" and opposition parties have alleged that the government was involved in a cover-up operation.
"This smacks of a cover-up unless the government comes clean," Liberal Party leader Nick Clegg said.
While the government should be able to protect some sensitive information, it was "unacceptable to conceal the circumstances around the alleged torture of this individual," said Clegg.
Mohamed, who alleges that he was tortured by US agents in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan between 2002 and 2004, has said that British secret agencies were complicit in the practice.
He has been held at the US prison camp on Cuba since 2004 and alleged that he was beaten, scalded and blasted with music, and that his genitals were repeatedly sliced with a razor blade, according to British press reports Thursday.
The detainee, who came to Britain as a child asylum seeker, is one of three British residents the government has said it will accept when Guantanamo is closed.
He is reported to have been on hunger strike and "close to death," according to the Guardian Thursday.
The paper quoted Lieutenant Colonel Yvonne Bradley, a US military lawyer who visited Mohamed last week, as saying: "The real worry is that he comes out in a coffin."
