Torture Inquiry: My Letter to William Hague 35


This is the letter I wrote to William Hague, via my local MP Angela Bray, on 24 May. I was not going to publish it until I received Hague’s reply, but as he has not replied after six weeks…

I did receive almost immediately from Angela Bray a copy of the very fair letter with which she forwarded mine to William Hague.

24 May 2010

Dear Ms Bray,

UK Ministers’ Complicity in Torture

May I congratulate you upon your election? I should confess I was campaigning hard for your

Lib Dem opponent Jon Ball, but I offer you my sincere good wishes for your career in parliament.

I should be most grateful if you could forward this letter and attachments to the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, for his comments. The attachments are FCO documents but I rather suspect are not amongst those which his officials would select to show to him.

The documents arise from my time as British Ambassador to Uzbekistan. I have obtained them under the Freedom of Information Act. Those not written by me were carefully drafted to lessen the disclosure of culpability, and have further been carefully redacted. However I believe you will agree with me that it is impossible to read this short series of documents without drawing the conclusion that they reveal a policy of knowing complicity in torture. The Secretary of State referred to in the documents is, of course, Jack Straw.

I should also be most grateful if Mr Hague would personally consider again the substantial redactions which have been made from the documents. I of course saw the originals and I would argue that these redactions are not genuinely made in the interest of national security, but rather to avoid embarrassment to ministers. In the real world, it is not a secret that we receive intelligence reports from the CIA, nor that ministers read them. No specific intelligence is disclosed under the redactions.

The Guardian has reported that Mr Hague is considering the initiation of a public inquiry into allegations of UK complicity in torture. I would applaud this. I would however urge that it is essential that any evidence to such an inquiry be given under oath and at risk of perjury proceedings. I believe that otherwise the truth may be hard to discover. I should most certainly be prepared to give evidence to any such inquiry.

Finally, and with both shame and reluctance, I feel compelled to ask something for myself. I should state that this request is of nowhere near the same order of importance as the matters above, and I do pray that in dismissing it you do not dismiss the rest.

I believe I was the only senior official to minute his opposition to our complicity with torture, and very shortly after the events outlined in these documents, I was suspended and faced with 18 disciplinary allegations which branded me a sexual blackmailer, an alcoholic and a thief.

I am not, and have never been, any of those things and, after a four month investigation, was cleared on all those charges. But in the meantime my physical and mental health and, more dear to me, my public reputation had been destroyed. I came extremely close to sharing the fate of poor David Kelly, and I believe for very similar reasons.

The only disciplinary charge on which I was convicted was that of telling people about the false charges which I had been told to keep secret ?” but without telling people, how could I clear my name? The FCO line has always been that, when faced with such serious allegations, it had no choice but to investigate them. But that is completely at odds with the fact that the formal investigation found there was “No evidence” to support 16 of 18 allegations.

I genuinely believe that the allegations were concocted within the FCO, with malicious intent, because my internal opposition to torture was seen as endangering our secret policy of collusion with torture In fact I can think of no other explanation.

As you may be aware, a great many other people believe the same and the case has become justly notorious.

My request for myself is that the Secretary of State initiate an inquiry, by somebody external to the FCO, into what was done to me and why. Failing that, a simple apology that I was faced in such a public way with such heinous charges, of which I was innocent. To this day, the FCO has always avoided acknowledging my innocence of these dreadful accusations. It would mean the world to me.

Yours faithfully,

Craig J Murray

I have censored part of the final sentence, relating to impact on my family, for personal reasons.

If the government’s inquiry does go ahead, and is a formal inquiry under the Inquiries Act, I shall be applying to be a core participant. As the only civil servant who attempted to stop the policy which the inquiry is investigating, and having been sacked for my pains, I feel I have a strong case. As a core participant I would have the right to counsel who could submit questions to all witnesses. Frankly, few are in as good a position as I to know the right questions to ask.

Senior civil servants are pushing very hard to ensure the inquiry does not consider the general policy of torture, but only looks at individual cases of those who were tortured. A few MI5 and MI6 junior officers would be scapegoated, and compensation paid to a few victims of torture. Ministerial and senior civil service direction would be ignored. They also want most of the proceedings to be secret and – amazingly – at one stage MI6 have even been pushing for disgraced 79 year old Lord Hutton to head the inquiry.

It is by no means certain that there will be a meaningful inquiry at all.


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35 thoughts on “Torture Inquiry: My Letter to William Hague

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  • Andy Keen

    I do feel for you Craig, and continue to be inspired by your determination to fight for those who are suffering appallingly, in whatever ways you can, and you have every right to ask for redress for the way you have been treated.

    It is appalling that you have not had a reply, but certainly my own MP does not seem to feel committed to passing letters on to Hague. Is it a fundamental duty for them to do so? Mine replied the same day I wrote, but suggested I write directly to Hague which I thought pointless as it will never reach him.

    Would it help put more pressure on Hague if the British papers could be forced to take more notice? What about an open letter signed by as many people as possible (preferably including some eminent ones), to The Independent? Also provide a way for commenters on this site to add their name and email address electronically(Avaaz style) to say they agree – this is not difficult to do technically. If you think this is a good idea I am willing to help any way I can, including doing an initial draft of a letter or contacting people who might be willing to sign it.

  • Richard Robinson

    “- Perhaps it is possible that people in the FCO are holding your letter up and just sitting on it.

    – It’s a good trick if you can do it.

    *applause*. Never mind the Indian rope trick, we have the British Letter Trick. All those fakirs … (waits for the spelling flame)

  • mark golding

    Craig,

    Thank-you for mentioning David Kelly – a powerful correspondance.

    Sory folks for my absence – my connection has been continuously intermittent so I am in the process of changing provider and router.

  • Trojan Horace

    Plainly Sir Peter Gibson is professionally conflicted. He can’t be both a witness and Chair for an inquiry. If the inquiry is to be able to do its job he will need to be a witness. Whilst it’s fine for Downing Street to have “full confidence” in Sir Peter, one trusts that Sir Peter himself will shortly be writing to Home Office Secretary William Hague recusing himself once he fully appreciates the difficulties involved.

  • Anonymous

    PS – That should of course have been Theresa Maye as Home Secretary – Hague being Foreign Sec’

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