Court pressed on 'torture' case

Mr Miliband told MPs there had been no specific threat to break off cooperation

The High Court has been asked to reconsider a ruling that US intelligence material relating to claims of torture should remain secret.

It documents the treatment of a Guantanamo Bay detainee, who says UK agencies were complicit in torture.

Judges said there had been a US "threat" about future intelligence sharing if it was published.

But the man's lawyers argue David Miliband had said there was no threat and had effectively misled the court.

Solicitors acting for Binyam Mohamed, 30, - an Ethiopian national who had been in the UK since he was 15 - have now asked the High Court to reconsider its decision.

Case 'undermined'

A spokesman for Leigh Day & Co said: "In an astonishing sequence of events following the judgment, the foreign secretary conceded that the new regime [in America] had not actually been approached and stated that in fact no threat had ever been made by the US."

That seemed "to undermine the whole basis of the court's reluctant decision to refuse to publish those details," they said.

They have lodged an application with the High Court requesting the judgement be reopened.

For the record, the United States authorities did not threaten to "break off" intelligence co-operation with the UK David Miliband

The US material, disclosed to the High Court on the grounds it would not be published, was described by judges Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones as a US summary of Mr Mohamed's treatment "which made no disclosure of sensitive intelligence matters".

They had wanted to publish the material in the interest of safeguarding the rule of law and democratic accountability but said: "We had no reason ... to anticipate there would be made a threat of the gravity of the kind made by the United States government that it would reconsider its intelligence sharing relationship."

They also said they had been informed by lawyers for the foreign secretary that the threat to withdraw co-operation remained, even under President Barack Obama's new administration.

'Lobbying campaign'

However in a Commons statement on the case on Thursday Mr Miliband told MPs the word "threat" was used by the Court of Appeal - but he described what the Americans had said as "a simple affirmation of the facts of intelligence co-operation".

"For the record, the United States authorities did not threaten to "break off" intelligence co-operation with the UK," he said.

They had pointed out that disclosing the documents would be "likely to result in serious damage to US national security and could harm existing intelligence information-sharing...between our two governments".

Mr Mohamed, a British resident, claimed he was tortured

Pressed to raise the issue again with the US, in the light of the new administration and changes to CIA personnel, he added: "I am not going to join a lobbying campaign against the American government on this decision. It is a decision that they have to make."

Clive Stafford Smith, of legal action charity Reprieve, said: "It seems unfair for the British government to pretend that Obama has ratified the retrograde policies of Bush without even asking him."

Mr Mohamed was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and has been held by the US at Guantanamo Bay since September 2004.

The US authorities accused him of conspiring with Al-Qaeda leaders to plan a series of terrorist attacks but charges against him were dropped in October.

He says evidence against him is based on confessions extracted by torture and ill treatment - claims denied by the US. Mr Miliband said British efforts to get him returned to the UK are being pursued "at the highest level".

The attorney general has been asked to investigate claims Mr Mohamed was tortured and British agents were complicit in it.