From Guardian Unlimited
Secrets charges against a Foreign Office civil servant were dramatically dropped at the Old Bailey yesterday after it emerged that senior figures within his own department had privately admitted no harm was done by his leaking a series of Whitehall documents.
The case against Derek Pasquill, who faced jail for passing secret papers to journalists, collapsed as it was becoming increasingly clear that it could have caused the government severe political embarrassment.
The leaked documents related to the US practice of secretly transporting terror suspects to places where they risked being tortured, and UK government policy towards Muslim groups.
Craig & Nadira on Newsnight last night – at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/2008/01/wedn…
Sorry, don't know how to make a hyperlink. This is what it says.
Belly dancer
It was already one of the most eccentric stories to come out of the Foreign Office in a long while. Britain's Ambassador to Uzbekistan gets fired after criticising the country's human rights record and carrying on with a 22-year-old local belly dancer. Now the story of Craig Murray has taken another equally eye-brow raising twist. He and his girlfriend are back in Britain ?" and they've written a play about how they met. The piece, performed solely by his partner Nadira Berkhanov-Murray, is more harrowing than you might expect. Madeleine Holt has the report.
Emily Maitlis's elegant eyebrows were certainly raised by the stuff about spanking!
Jolly good!! Keep up the good work!
However, Mr Pasquill still has the ordeal of a disciplinary hearing as a result of his commendable and public-spirited courage. For shame!
Has anyone come across the document in this trial 'Detainees' written December 7 2005, signed by a private secretary at the Foreign Office and addressed to Grace Cassey, assistant private secretary at 10 Downing Street? There seems little mention of this on the web, only one I've found is:
http://www.observercyprus.com/observer/NewsDetail…
"… The briefing notes used by Blair on December 7 2005, titled 'Detainees' were signed by a private secretary at the Foreign Office and addressed to Grace Cassey, assistant private secretary at 10 Downing Street. The document is a shocking revelation not of what the government knew, but what it did not wish to know, and admits complacency and ignorance. It states clearly that Extraordinary Rendition "is almost certainly illegal," and advises Blair that in dealing with the issue in public, "We should try to avoid getting drawn on detail, at least until we have been able to complete the substantial research required to establish what has happened even since 1997; and try to move the debate on.""
I caught something on TV that one of the documents involved suggested something rendition-related took place on UK territory, other than the CIA flights. Wondered if this document was the source of this.
Thanks for the link Strategist. It was quite an entertaining piece… 🙂