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Binyam Mohamed

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, observes that it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones. To respond to her is more of a challenge, as she is obviously expert in this area. I therefore attempt to respond to her with some humility and anxiety, since she knows far more about these issues than I do. I start with her first question, on Guantanamo. We continue to press for Mr Mohamed’s return from Guantanamo as vigorously as before and we very much hope that we will be successful. As to whether his return would be a threat to public security, I assure her that, as she well knows, the UK authorities would not do anything that was prejudicial to our national security. The noble Baroness’s second question was whether UK agencies, or individuals in those agencies, were complicit in torture. Because of the ruling of the court last year, the Home Secretary felt that it was absolutely necessary to refer the matter to the Attorney-General to make sure that this had, indeed, been fully investigated and that the rights of both the individual and, more broadly, British freedoms and the rule of law had been fully respected in this case. Equally, because of that referral, the noble Baroness would not expect me to comment further on what the Attorney-General might recommend. The noble Baroness refers to ““complicity””. The Government are clear that this is not a matter of a wink and a nod or of turning the other way and somehow extracting information because torture is done by another hand. We are very clear about this: we do not participate in torture. We will get information through interview techniques, confident, we hope, that the individual being interviewed has not been subjected to torture. That is an absolute principle of our conduct. I do not want there to be a suggestion that, somehow, we are complicit in some sort of partial cover-up or attempt by the right hand to deny that it knows what the left hand is doing. On the question of specific representations to the US, I reassure the noble Baroness that across several exchanges at different levels between different officials on both sides, this has been discussed in intimate detail. We are not hiding behind some generic American reluctance to see intelligence published. This case has been discussed very specifically, most recently by the Foreign Secretary on Monday in Washington with the new Secretary of State. Similarly, the statement of the US National Security Council was very much in response to the specific findings of the High Court this week. It expressed gratitude to Her Majesty’s Government, "““for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information and preserve the long standing intelligence-sharing relationship that enables both countries to protect their citizens””." I reassure the noble Baroness that we were not hiding behind generic official boilerplate. This is the very clear view of the US. As to the complete release of the material, including redacted paragraphs, let me be clear that the lawyers have received full access to the material that they need. The material was subjected to a legal review and all material that was felt to be necessary was released to the defendant’s US lawyers. The only question is that of public release. On that point, because it is US material, it is for the US authorities and legal system to determine whether it should be released. As the noble Baroness and the noble Lord noted, the very different position of the incoming Administration is obviously relevant. It is very much their privilege, and within their rights, to change policy and release this material, but we cannot breach these rights and do so for them. That is something for the new Administration to do. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, notes that only seven paragraphs have been redacted and therefore wonders whether they are central to the case or amount only to political embarrassment. The public sharing of these paragraphs would certainly be viewed by our intelligence agency counterparts in Washington as a politicisation of intelligence, which is, in this regard, much the same as embarrassment. It is information that they own, which we would be sharing in a way that they felt was against their interests. I come back to the point that, if it is to be released, it should be a US decision, based on US courts and US government practice. How quickly the Attorney-General will be able to proceed is a matter for her. As noble Lords know, Attorney-Generals are historically reluctant to comment until they have finished their review. Finally, on the noble Lord’s point about Diego Garcia, we share his hope that there will be no more surprises on this. We sought and received clear assurances from the US Administration that there had been no further use of Diego Garcia beyond what had been debated in this House. Again, if that is not true, we will be the first to want to know.