by ghandi
Thu Feb 16th, 2006 at 09:05:40 AM EST
from the front page. --Jérôme
Britain's outspoken former Ambassador to the Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan, Craig Murray who helped expose vicious human rights abuses by the US-funded regime of Islam Karimov is now engaged in a battle with The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office who are determined to stop him from publishing his book, Murder in Samarkand.
The British Government has come out with fully armed and are threatening four grounds of legal action if he goes to press:
a) Libel
b) Crown Copyright
c) Breach of Confidence
d) Official Secrets Act
But he doesn't care, he’s going to press anyway.
So he needs our support.
Murray resigned in protest from his position due to the US/British policy of rendering prisoners caught elsewhere in the world to be tortured in Karimov's infamous prisons.
On the night prior to Christmas Eve in 2005, the UK Government threated Murray that he would face litigation if he went to press with his book - to which, in reaction, he promptly released several documents on the Internet that government officials told him would violate the British Secrecy Act if made public. Within hours, the documents ripped around the world, proving that in the new era of blogging and political networks that have reached out across the Atlantic and around the world - whistleblowers have some reprise in stating their case.
The documents unveiled last year included telegrams that Craig sent to the Foreign Office detailing disgust at the UK government’s use of intelligence passed on by the Uzbeki secret service. Also a copy of legal advice the Foreign Office sought, to see whether they were operating within the Law in accepting torture intelligence, and according to Michael Wood the FCO legal adviser; “it’s fine, as long as it is not used as evidence."
From Chris Floyd...
And evil is the word for it. Murray, while still serving as UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, dug up proof that the tortures condoned by Bush and Blair included boiling prisoners to death, in addition to the traditional methods of pulling out fingernails, beating, starving, and raping. Nor were these refinements limited to the prisoners themselves -- their family members were also tortured to produce "confessions." One chilling case unearthed by Murray, who witnessed the Stalinist show trials mounted by Karimov's judicial goons, featured a peasant farmer who was forced to confess to extensive family links to Osama Bin Laden -- after seeing his children tortured before his eyes. At the show trial, the old man renounced his confession and exposed the torture of children -- and was promptly hustled away.
All of this -- and much more -- Murray reported at the time to his superiors in London, and to his diplomatic colleagues from Europe and the United States. At every turn, he found either resigned complicity -- "What can we do? The US supports Karimov?" -- to outright embrace of torture from -- who else? -- Bush's own man in Tashkent, who told Murray that the "reduction of civil liberties" under Karimov was "no bad thing," since it was being done in the name of combatting Islamic extremism. Here we see the Bushist ethos in essence: Everything is permitted -- torture, murder, rape, kidnapping, aggression -- in the name of "fighting terrorism." Bush has of course brought this police state philosophy to America, as even the mainstream media is beginning to report.
Murray's release of these documents -- an end run around the Blair government's threat to censor his whistle-blowing book on his tenure in Uzbekistan -- is yet another of a whole battery of smoking guns proving the pervasive criminality of the oh-so-Christian Coalition of Bush and Blair.
Blairwatch is covering the latest story in-depth.
“Book Burning: Craig Murray to defy Foreign Office Threats, and publish ‘Murder in Samarkand’”
