Evidence supporting Binyam Mohamed's claims he was tortured is crucial to his defence, writes Carol Coulter Legal Affairs Editor.
BINYAM MOHAMED was born in Ethiopia in 1978. His family had opposed the regime and left that country claiming asylum in the US and the UK.
Some of them now live in the US, where they are citizens. Binyam was initially refused asylum in the UK in 1994, when he was 16, but in 2000 he was given leave to reside there.
While living in the UK he studied electronics and engineering, and worked as a janitor in London. He became involved in drugs.
He converted to Islam and has said he wanted to move away from the environment that fostered his drug abuse and see if Pakistan and Afghanistan were good Islamic countries. He visited both countries in 2001.
The charges against him include that while in Afghanistan he trained in al-Qaeda camps and participated in combat operations between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. It is alleged that he was trained in the use of remote controlled devices to be used against US forces in Afghanistan, and that when he returned to Pakistan after the fall of the Taliban, he worked with others on the preparation of a "dirty bomb" for use in the US.
On April 10th, 2002 he was arrested at Karachi airport by the Pakistani authorities when he was about to board a plane for London, using a false passport. Four days later the UK authorities were informed by the US authorities of his arrest and questioning. The UK authorities confirmed his identity, and later an officer of the UK security service interviewed him in Pakistan.
According to this officer, Mr Mohamed confirmed that he had fought in Afghanistan. However, he said that the claims concerning a "dirty bomb" was "the FBI perception", and he told this officer he thought instructions on bomb-making he had seen on the internet were a joke.
According to the High Court in London, it was common ground between Mr Mohamed's lawyers and the UK authorities that in Pakistan he was held incommunicado and without access to a lawyer, contrary to Pakistani law. He claimed that in Pakistan he was questioned, not by Pakistanis, but by US agents, and that he was tortured.
After May 2002 the UK security service made a number of further attempts to question him, but were not allowed access to him. In July they recorded that they had no information as to his whereabouts. While they later received reports of interviews with him from the US authorities, they were not given access to him or information about where he was.
Mr Mohamed alleges that on July 22nd, 2002 he was taken by US personnel to Morocco where he was tortured with severe beatings, sleep deprivation and cuts to his genitals.
He claims that on January 21st or 22nd, 2004 he was transferred to the "Prison of Darkness" near Kabul where he was further tortured.
He claims that pictures were taken of his genitals before that flight. He states he was transferred to Bagram in May 2004, and on September 20th brought to Guantánamo Bay.
He signed statements in Bagram and Guantánamo confessing to "anything those inflicting that treatment wanted him to say".
In November 2005 he was charged before the military commission set up by the US government, which was later struck down by the US Supreme Court. A new military commission was established in 2006, and he is now charged before that with terrorist offences that carry the death penalty.
Under Article 15 of the UN Convention against Torture evidence obtained under torture cannot be used in a trial. Central to Mr Mohamed's allegations of torture are his claims that he was illegally "rendered" to torture centres on July 22nd, 2002 and January 21st, 2004.
That is why his lawyers are seeking information about certain US flights that stopped over in Shannon on or near those dates.