R (Mohamed) v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (No. 2)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 16 October 2009 |
| Neutral Citation | [2009] EWHC 2973 (Admin),[2009] EWHC 152 (Admin),[2008] EWHC 2100 (Admin),[2009] EWHC 2549 (Admin) |
| Date | 16 October 2009 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
Queen's Bench Divisional Court
Before Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones
Where there existed a vital public interest requiring, for reasons of democratic accountability and the rule of law in the United Kingdom, that important evidence summarised by a court in its judgment should be placed in the public domain in order to permit better informed public debate in relation to matters that were not of an intelligence nature, there was no viable alternative to making the material public.
The test of exceptional circumstance justifying the reopening of a judgment was applicable in public law as well as private law cases. The Queen's Bench Divisional Court so held in its fifth judgment in judicial review proceedings brought by the claimant, Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian national and f ormer UK resident, who was detained by the US at Guantanamo Bay detention facility until February 2009, when he was released without charge and allowed to return to the UK.
The claimant had challenged the decision of the Foreign Secretary to refuse to provide to his lawyers exculpatory evidence, which related to his alleged ill-treatment after arrest, and which might have assisted him in US military commission proceedings.
At the request of the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, seven paragraphs had been redacted from the court's first open judgmentUNK ([2008] EWHC 2048 (Admin)). Those paragraphs contained a summary by the court of the account given in reports by the US authorities to the British Security Services about the treatment of the claimant by the US authorities while he was held in Pakistan after his arrest in April 2002 and prior to his interview by an officer of the British Security Service in May 2002.
The Foreign Secretary had submitted that the US government had made it clear that disclosure would seriously harm existing intelligence arrangements between the US and the UK.
In its fourth open judgmentUNK ([2009] EWHC 152 (Admin)), the court, having considered arguments by the parties and media organisations concerning the possible restoration of the paragraphs, had concluded that they should not be made public.
An application was subsequently made that the court should reconsider its decision on the basis that it had been misled or that there had been a misunderstanding as to the evidence...
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Subject Index
...(on the application of Mohamed) v Secretaryof State for Foreign and CommonwealthAffairs [2008] EWHC 2048 (Admin), [2009] 1WLR 2579; [2008] EWHC 2100 (Admin); [2008]EWHC 2519 (Admin); [2009] EWHC 152(Admin); [2009] EWHC 2048 (Admin); [2009]EWHC 2549 (Admin); [2009] EWHC 2973(Admin); [2010] E......
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