Britain’s national security and the lives of its citizens will be put at risk if the High Court publishes its findings on what happened to former terror detainee Binyam Mohamed at the hands of the CIA, two judges were told yesterday.

This was the effective meaning of letters from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CIA officials which warned that the US, even under the new Obama administration, would review its intelligence sharing agreement with the UK if the court releases seven brief paragraphs about Mohamed’s treatment into the public domain, the court was told.

Lawyers for Foreign Secretary David Miliband told Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones that the threat from America to restrict its intelligence co-operation with the UK had been assessed by Miliband as having a “high risk threshold”.