The international flap over the torture of Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed has taken an unexpected turn.

Last week there were allegations that the U.S. government had threatened to end intelligence cooperation with Britain if a report containing seven “sensitive paragraphs supplied by U.S. intelligence services” about Binyam Mohamed’s torture were made public by two British judges.

It’s now looking like British Foreign Secretary David Miliband is guilty of carving up the truth as cold-bloodedly as Binyam Mohamed’s torturers had sliced his penis with a scalpel.

As I pointed out in my post last Thursday,
a) Foreign office lawyers had testified under oath that the US had threatened to break off intelligence co-operation.
b) Miliband was now saying that no such threat had actually been made.

Which led me to write:

…if they committed perjury, they could only have done so under instructions from Miliband. And there will no doubt be a big ruckus about this in the U.K., and pressure for a full investigation.

According to a Daily Telegraph report over the weekend, Miliband was trying to cover up the smoking-gun evidence of British complicity in unspeakable torture:

Material in a CIA dossier on Mr Mohamed that was blacked out by High Court judges contained details of how British intelligence officers supplied information to his captors and contributed questions while he was brutally tortured, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.

Intelligence sources have revealed that spy chiefs put pressure on Mr Miliband to do nothing that would leave serving MI6 officers open to prosecution, or to jeopardise relations with the CIA, which is passing them “top notch” information on British terrorist suspects from its own informers in Britain.
[...]
A British official, who is regularly briefed on intelligence operations, said: “The concern was that the document revealed that intelligence from the British agencies was used by the Americans and that there were British questions asked while Binyam Mohamed was being tortured.

“Miliband is being pushed hard by the intelligence agencies to protect the identity of those involved.”

The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed’s genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, “is very far down the list of things they did,” the official said.

Another source familiar with the case said: “British intelligence officers knew about the torture and didn’t do anything about it. They supplied information to the Americans and the Moroccans. They supplied questions, they supplied photographs. There is evidence of all of that.”

David Davis, the former shadow home secretary who first highlighted the case, said: “What has become clear is that the information being held back is not protecting the American government who have made a clean breast of their involvement in torture, but the British government, where at least two cabinet ministers have denied any complicity whatsoever.

“It is very clear who stands to be embarrassed by this and who is being protected by this secrecy. It is not the Americans, it is Labour ministers.”

The full document on Mr Mohamed could still be released. President Barack Obama is under pressure from the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee to release the unedited report.

A source on the committee described the case as “shocking” and told The Sunday Telegraph: “If the President doesn’t act we could hold a hearing or write to subpoena the documents. We need to know what’s in those documents.”