The US State Department yesterday warned that disclosure of secret information in the case of a British resident said to have been tortured before he was sent to Guantanamo Bay would cause "serious and lasting damage" to security relations between the countries.  

Stephen Mathias, a legal adviser to the department, also claimed that the "national security of the UK" would be affected by disclosure of the details of the detention and interrogation of Binyam Mohamed, 30, who is accused of conspiring with al-Qaida. 

This in response to a British High Court ruling that the UK Government should hand over to lawyers of a Guantanamo detainee, Binyam Mohamed, exculpatory secret documents. Mohamed was a British resident who was arrested in Pakistan in 2002. 

The United States illegally rendered him to (shudder) Morocco, where he was held for over a year, moved to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan, then to the Bagram prison in that country before being shipped off to Guantanamo Bay, which is his current address.  

His lawyers claim that the evidence likely to be used to put him before a military commission is as a result of torture. 

The charges say he attended an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan where he learned how to make remote-controlled explosive devices.

The court found that MI5 participated in the unlawful interrogation of Mohamed. Some of the information used as the basis of the interrogation came from the British authorities as a result of the detainee's long residency in the UK. 

One MI5 person was so concerned about incriminating himself in an alleged war crime that he initially refused to answer questions from the judges, even when the hearing was held in private. 

The High Court said the Foreign Secretary is under a "duty" to release the secret material to the accused's lawyers.

It is "not only necessary but essential for his defence". Without it he will not get a fair trial.

What we are seeing, increasingly, is an abhorrence by the courts of the torture tactic employed by the US in the "war on terror".

Not only that but the House of Lords in June ruled that in a criminal case the Crown cannot rely on secret evidence.

In what is known as the Davis case, the prosecution said that key witnesses to a murder would be in fear of their lives if they gave evidence openly. Consequently, their identity was to be obscured, that is until the House of Lords stepped in and, in a ringing statement of some age-old principles, said that where the evidence is crucial an accused must be able to confront his accusers. That is a fundamental principle of common law.

Lawyers for the Ethiopian national have been arguing in the high court that they should have access to details of his interrogation from the time he was detained in 2002 until he was taken to Guantanamo Bay - where he is still held - in 2004. 

Mohamed claims that he was tortured by, among other methods, having his penis cut with a razor blade.