LONDON — A British resident was beaten, shackled and threatened while in U.S. custody in Pakistan in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a summary of intelligence reports sent from the CIA to Britain’s MI5 spy agency.
The information, released by a court Wednesday over the objections of the British government, shows that British officials knew as early as 2002 about the treatment of Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed — one of hundreds of young Muslim men scooped up around the world at the time.
The White House said the ruling would make intelligence sharing with Britain more difficult in the future.
The summary adds to growing evidence of Mohamed’s mistreatment during his seven years in American custody. In November, a U.S. district judge in Washington found evidence of even harsher abuse while Mohamed was held in Morocco for two years before he was moved to Guantanamo Bay and charged with plotting with al-Qaeda to bomb American apartment buildings.
In 2008, when Mohamed was facing a military trial at Guantanamo, his lawyers sued the British government for intelligence documents they said could prove that evidence against him had been gathered under torture.
The charges were later dropped, and in February 2009, he was sent back to Britain.
After his release, the lawsuit became a larger battle for access to information involving The Associated Press, the BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post and other media organizations.
The British government argued that releasing the information could harm trans-Atlantic intelligence cooperation, but three of Britain’s most senior judges ruled Wednesday that key information should be released, in part because it was not “genuinely secret material” since other details of Mohamed’s abuse had been made public in the U.S. court.
According to the summary, Mohamed, now 31, was subjected to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities,” including sleep deprivation and shackling.
