The Assange case 211


Many thanks indeed to “Me in Us” for this transcript.

00:12 ONN: Hello. We’re here today at the home of Craig Murray, the whistleblower and former ambassador to Uzbekistan. Craig, thank you for being here with us on ON today. On Sunday you spoke out publicly defending Julian Assange in giving a speech in front of the Ecuadorean assembly. What made you want to stand up and be counted as among his supporters?

CRAIG MURRAY: Well, the main reason is that I’ve been a whistleblower myself and active with other whistleblowers, and I’ve seen so many whistleblowers fitted up with false charges, and as soon as anybody blows the whistle, particularly on any aspects of, if you like, neoconservative foreign policy and war, you’re going to get fitted up and you’re going to get defamed with false charges, and if you’re male I think in every case those charges are going to involve sexual allegations. So I could just see, if you like, a miscarriage of justice in the process of being done, and I wanted to do anything I can to help stop it.

01:16 ONN: You said that individual whistleblowers are not charged with political offenses, they are fit up with criminal ones. Would you care to elaborate on that?

CRAIG MURRAY: Yes, certainly, and I’ll give a few examples. James Yee, who was a chaplain at Guantanamo Bay, he blew the whistle on torture and mistreatment of inmates at Guantanamo Bay. He was first of all charged with espionage and acts of espionage benefiting a foreign country. Then those charges were dropped and he was charged with adultery, which apparently under US military law is an offense, and he was charged with having pornography on his government computer at work, and he was convicted of both of those, and then later the conviction was overturned.

Brigadier Janis Karpinski was the lady in charge of all Iraqi prisoners of war in Iraq, not just at Abu Ghraib. She was in charge of all military installations. She wasn’t actually at Abu Ghraib, and actually she’d only ever been to Abu Ghraib once. When the story broke about all the torture at Abu Ghraib, she came forward and she said that she had personally seen a document signed by Donald Rumsfeld detailing forms of torture to be used at Abu Ghraib, including stress positions, including threatening naked prisoners with dogs. She said those techniques were detailed in the document which was signed by Donald Rumsfeld. She was recalled to the United States, and the day after she returned to the United States she was allegedly caught shoplifting and charged with shoplifting.

Scott Ritter was an Iraqi weapons inspector on the same UN team as David Kelly. He was a captain in the US Marines. He stated that there were no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. On his return to the United States he was entrapped in a computer sex honey trap by an FBI agent, and this was admitted in court, that it was an FBI agent who entrapped him.

03:51 ONN: For those who don’t know, what does this term “honey trap” refer to?

CRAIG MURRAY: Honey trap is where you put, if you like, sexual bait in order to catch someone, to entice someone into a sexual act which they otherwise might not have committed had you not put the temptation right in their way. It’s a term frequently used in espionage and diplomatic circles because it’s a well-known technique of the security services. And Scott Ritter fell for this honey trap and he was actually convicted of pedophilia, because although the agent in concern was an adult female, she was using an Internet persona of an underage person. But — and Scott Ritter’s case is the only one where I think there may be any truth at all in the allegations, and in his case it wouldn’t have happened, the whole thing wouldn’t have happened had the FBI not set up the situation and gone out to get him.

And I should say these are all people I knew personally. Two of them are people I knew before they were accused. And it happens to everyone. And the same thing happened to me. I blew the whistle on British complicity in torture, MI6′s complicity with torture in Uzbekistan and on extraordinary rendition. I was immediately charged with sexual allegations, in effect with extorting sex from visa applicants. It took me, you know, 18 months of real hell, to be honest, to clear my name. Because, you know, I know once people throw those kind of allegations at you, it tarnishes your name forever. It’s very easy to destroy someone’s reputation by sexual allegations.

So, for me, the absolutely extraordinary thing is that, you know, after this has happened to James Yee, happened to me, happened to Scott Ritter, happened to Janis Karpinski, they pulled the same trick again and again, and now it’s pulling it with Julian Assange, and anybody taking seriously these accusations astonishes me, because the idea that people just can’t see what is happening in the world and the way that whistleblowers are being persecuted, to me it’s astonishing. And the fact that none of what I’ve just said to you will you find reported in the mainstream media, you know, ought to really, really alarm people about the kind of world we live in.

06:30 ONN: Yes, there does seem to be a rather consistent failure by the mainstream media to address these issues. I mean, in your opinion, are journalists doing their job right?

CRAIG MURRAY: No. I mean, it seems to me there is very little actual journalism in the what you might call the paid media. And part of that, of course, is that, you know, the media is owned by a very small number of people, and really people have to write what their bosses want them to write. It’s very, very difficult to get the truth into the media on any subject at all. On top of which also, of course, newspapers actually employ far less journalists than they used to. There used to be a time when individual newspapers in Fleet Street had 30 or 40 foreign correspondents per newspaper. There aren’t actually now 30 or 40 foreign correspondents between the whole of the British newspaper industry. So just the number of them has gone down, and mostly they spend their time, you know, cutting and pasting government press releases and putting out the story, the story which the people who own the papers want them to hear.

The same goes for broadcast media, which again has precisely the same restricted private ownership, unless it’s owned by the government. Though the government of course is owned by the same people who own the newspapers — it really doesn’t make a great deal of difference.

08:10 ONN: So what do you think about the actual allegations, the actual substance of the allegations made against Julian Assange? I mean, is there any evidence at all that you can see of – ?

CRAIG MURRAY: I mean, to some extent it almost doesn’t matter because, as I say, having been through it myself and having seen all the whistleblowers I know go through it, it was only a matter of time before they did it to Julian Assange. So the question of what they charged him with or what evidence they managed to fake is almost irrelevant.

I would say, I think, you know, choosing rape and sexual allegations is very clever. The CIA do know what they are doing. Firstly, because nothing tarnishes your name in that way. People might forgive you for being a bank robber, they might even eventually forgive you for being a murderer, if you said you did it in the heat of the moment, but nobody will ever forgive you for being a rapist or a pedophile. So the choice of allegation is very clever.

Also, it splits the left. If the Birmingham Six had been charged with rape, they would still be in jail today, because nobody would ever have been allowed in public campaigning to query the evidence against them, because unfortunately, because of the genuine problems with rape, genuine rape, going unpunished in society, the reaction to that has been that many perfectly decent people think the only way to correct that imbalance is by removing essentially all protection to people accused of rape. And that view is deeply held by genuine and decent people who are concerned about the position of women in society. But once you have a social acceptance that you ought not to be allowed in public discourse to challenge people making accusations of rape, that makes it the perfect tool for a security service to use, because everyone has agreed in advance that it’s the one crime that no one’s going in campaigning against miscarriage of justice to challenge the evidence or challenge the accusers.

And, as I say, you have so many people on the left whose primary political concern is feminism, who are being used as useful idiots by the CIA, who have been sidetracked into vitriolic attacks on Julian Assange, who are calling people like me rape apologists, just because the CIA has been very, very careful to choose the one accusation which they will always uphold, be it true or not. That’s the main problem with the allegations.

But, no, I mean, it is well worth studying the detail both of the allegations themselves and of the people making the allegations and of the procedures which have been adopted. Because even if you didn’t know all the background I’ve given you about how whistleblowers are always fitted up with these allegations, even if you didn’t know that, just from a careful close examination of the evidence in this case, which is widely available on the Internet, anybody would conclude this was a fit-up. I don’t see how anyone can seriously study the facts of the case and not think it’s a fit-up.

11:46 ONN: You mentioned the other day, you were giving an interview, and you mentioned one of Assange’s accusers by name, Anna Ardin, and this caused a big uproar. I’ve been doing some digging and I found out that she is in fact a Social Democrat politician. Do you feel that these are facts that need to be made widely available to public? Do you stand by the fact that you named Anna Ardin as one of his accusers?

CRAIG MURRAY: Absolutely. The most important single point in this is that Anna Ardin named herself. She has given a number of interviews to the media under her own name accusing Julian Assange, the first one of which I can find was in August of 2010. But I found at least 30 media interviews that she has given where she is reported as Anna Ardin making these accusations. Now the idea — and saying that she does not work for the CIA. It was interesting that she feels the need to say that. Most of us don’t go around denying we work for the CIA. And also saying that, you know, Assange is a misogynist and a rapist and goodness knows what else.

The idea that you should be able to make such accusations to the media – I don’t mean privately in court – that you should be able under your own name to make such media accusations and nobody should be allowed to reply to you and nobody should be allowed to use your name, even though you put it yourself in the newspapers, is sort of Kafkaesque. I actually cannot understand for the life of me why I ought not be allowed to use it when she openly puts it in the public domain herself.

And there are, you know, over 200,000 Google hits on her name, and she has been named in the mainstream media of every single major country I can find except for the UK She’s been named in the New York Times. She’s been named in the Times of India. She’s been named in Paris Match. She’s been named in La Republica. She’s been named in Der Spiegel. The UK is actually the only country where she has never been named by the mainstream media, which again is very strange.

But, no, she herself is a character with a very, very interesting history and very, very interesting ties, political ties, which don’t relate only to the Social Democrat Party in Sweden but that network of people in the police, the prosecution and Anna Ardin who are all connected, who are all working on this case together, who all have party links, is something which would itself make the case inadmissible in any decent jurisdiction. But she also has a history that relates to work with CIA-funded agencies in Miami and Cuba and Buenos Aries. So the more people study Anna Ardin, the better.

15:04 ONN: You’ll be referring, of course, to the Ladies in White, a feminist organization in Cuba based in Miami as well. Is that –

CRAIG MURRAY: That’s right. Look, she has an interesting and varied history of working in causes which, let’s say where there’s a mutual area of interest in South America with the CIA.

15:33 ONN: It’s also interesting now that it is Ecuador that has come out, that originally granted protection to Assange within the embassy and has now granted him full asylum. So if extradited to Sweden, what do you think would be the fate that would await Julian Assange there?

CRAIG MURRAY: Well, his fear is that he would very quickly be extradited on from Sweden to the United States, either extradited or rendered. And the Swedes actually now have a sort of legal rendition law for speedy temporary rendition to the United States, as it’s called. That’s what is worrying Julian Assange. Though I should say, I mean, my experience of the way they treat whistleblowers and my experience of what we have seen of the process in Sweden, I would say there must be just as big a fear that he will be unjustly convicted of rape, which I’m quite sure he hasn’t done. But if he arrives in Sweden, he will immediately be jailed. There’s no provision for bail. And the thing which most people don’t understand is that rape trials in Sweden are held entirely in secret, so nobody would ever see any of the evidence. The next thing we will hear is the verdict. My own view is the most likely scenario is that it’s been cooked up well in advance and that verdict will be guilty. And it’s very possible to do that because not only is the trial held in secret but there is no jury.

Now I’m not one of those people who believes that only the British system of law is okay. Many countries have different systems and often those systems work very well. But what you do have with the jury system is a situation where ordinary men and women do have that chance to stand up to the authorities and to say what they believe to be true. It may not be a chance that they take very often, but that possibility is there. Where you don’t have a jury, as in Sweden, the chances of the government if it wishes to seriously influencing the result are pretty firm.

18:15 I would look at the Jean Charles de Menezes inquest, for example, in the United Kingdom. In that case, the judge, who’s appointed by the government – and remember that it’s basically a government decision not just which judges get appointed but allocating judges to particular cases. In that case the judge, and sadly his name’s escaped me because he was a complete bloody disgrace, he gave a summing up which was totally tendentious and in which he said that the jury would not be allowed to return a verdict of unlawful killing, and he would only give them the choice of two verdicts, one of which was an open verdict, and the other one was that the killing had been lawful, but he wouldn’t let allow them to bring a verdict of unlawful killing, he would rule that verdict out of order, which again is a complete disgrace. He made absolutely plain that the verdict he wanted was that it was lawful. But it didn’t happen. The jury came back and said no, we’re going to bring back an open verdict. And they did, much to the annoyance of the judge.

19:37 The Clive Ponting case, when he leaked the fact that the Belgrano was actually sailing away from the Falkland Islands at the time it was destroyed with hundreds of people killed, he was charged with that under the Official Secrets Act. There was no doubt he was guilty. He was undoubtedly technically guilty. The judge said so, pretty well, in his summing up of that case. And the jury basically told the judge to get knotted and found him not guilty. So there’s always that possibility with a jury system.

Assange wouldn’t have a jury. He would be judged by a professional judge and two lay assessors. And the lay assessors are actually party political appointments, quite literally. One will be appointed by the Swedish Conservative Party and one by the Swedish Social Democratic party. The Swedish Conservative Party is very strongly aligned to George Bush and the neocons and the Social Democratic Party are precisely the people that Anna Ardin and the prosecutor and the police investigator and Anna Ardin’s lawyer all come from. So, there is every chance that this secret process would result in a complete stitch-up.

And I think although people have focused on the fear of him being extradited from Sweden to the United States, and I think that’s true and I think it’s legitimate, my personal view is an even bigger danger is of a secret trial where nobody ever gets to know what the evidence was and they announce to a complacent media that he’s been found guilty of rape at the end of it.

21:17 ONN: And then it’s a done deal and there can be no preventing it.

CRAIG MURRAY: Exactly. Then it’s a done deal and they shove him in jail for 10 years. Then when at the end of that period he comes out, he’s sent over to the United States and tried on terrorism charges, whatever, and by that stage, of course, he’s a convicted rapist as far as the media is concerned, and anyway 10 years have passed and nobody cares anymore.

21:40 ONN: That would be a terrible outcome. What would you think, do you think would be the result if William Hague carried out his threat to storm the Ecuadorean embassy at this point?

CRAIG MURRAY: Well, it’s an absolutely astonishing threat. I should say that I know for certain from colleagues, ex-colleagues within the Foreign Office, that in issuing that threat, William Hague was very closely pushed by the Americans. He was under a lot of pressure from the United States of America to get Assange to Sweden. Which again, you know, rather contradicts those who say he would be under no fear of extradition if he went to Sweden. Why are the Americans so keen to get him there? Why are they interested?

But it was an astonishing threat, because everyone in the world, except perhaps the heads of government in the United Kingdom and the United States, would view that as a grossly illegal act. It would be an absolute diplomatic outrage and it would be a, you know, a crime of aggression against Ecuador. The diplomatic repercussions would be astonishing for the United Kingdom. First of all, no British embassy would be safe around the world, because everyone would say, “Well, we can do the same as you, we can de-designate your embassy and move in and take it over.” And secondly, our relations with not just Latin America but most of the developing world at least would be very, very seriously set back.

And you must remember that we have enough problems in Latin America already. First of all we’ve got the crazy jingoistic, on both sides, dispute over the Falkland Islands. Then you’ve got the fact we would not extradite Pinochet when we’re so keen on extraditing Assange for offenses which even if they were true wouldn’t add up to a hundred thousandth of what Pinochet did. And then you have, of course, as I said earlier, the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes. The idea that the Metropolitan Police, having killed Jean Charles de Menezes, we would let them launch a physical attack on a Latin American embassy, is just astonishing.

So you know the repercussions would be enormous. And I think Hague has absolutely made a fool of himself because he’s made a threat which it would be totally disastrous were he to carry it out.

24:24 ONN: And what about the legality of such a thing? Using the 1987 Diplomatic Consular Premises Act is what Hague said, the legislation he said he’d use?

CRAIG MURRAY: Well, this is just utter nonsense because it can’t trump international law. You can’t have domestic legislation which is in conflict with international law, particularly an international treaty to which we are a party. We were actually I think the second signatory on the 1961 Vienna Convention, and it’s the single most subscribed to international treaty in the world. And interestingly enough, even the 1987 act in itself says that its provisions must be in accordance with international law, and it actually says that even in the 1987 act. Well it would be completely against international law for Hague to do what he’s planned to do. Article 22 of the Vienna Convention, Part 1, states absolutely baldly, without any qualification at all, that diplomatic premises are inviolable. Full stop. And they are. You know, you’re not allowed to enter anybody else’s diplomatic premises.

Even in the chaos of Afghanistan, Britain abandoned its embassy in Afghanistan, withdrew all its diplomats. I’m not sure of that. I don’t think we were chucked out. I think we left voluntarily. But at the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Britain withdrew, and our embassy sat there empty for decades, through the Soviet occupation, through the Taliban rule in Afghanistan, and the embassy building was only opened up again – although eventually we moved to new premises, it’s not the building we’re in now – but the original embassy building was only opened up again after the invasion in 2001, 2002. But it had been, for 20 years, it had sat there empty, under the Soviets and under the Taliban, and neither the Soviets nor the Taliban had entered the British embassy. Even though there was nobody there except a resident Afghan caretaker, they accepted the inviolability of embassy premises and they didn’t enter it, not the Soviets nor the Taliban. Now William Hague is proposing we should act much, much worse than either the Soviets or the Taliban, and this to me is absolutely astonishing. It beggars belief.

27:18 ONN: Okay, just one more question before we wrap up here, which was, what do you think the actual chances of Julian Assange running the gauntlet, so to speak, and making it to Ecuador safely? Do you see a way that he can manage to leave Britain now and get there to South America in safety?

CRAIG MURRAY: Physically it’s going to be very difficult. The chances of getting to Ecuador from the embassy in the middle of London without the agreement of the British authorities are limited. You can, you know, we can all think of sort of physical escape scenarios, but they’re not easy. There’s going to have to be a diplomatic solution. My guess would be that it will take a long while in coming, I think six months from now. There’s not going to be much public awareness that anything has changed, although talks will have been going on behind the scenes.

The obvious solution is for the Swedes to agree that they won’t extradite him to the United States, but the Swedes absolutely refuse to do that, and the United States refuses to say that it won’t apply for extradition, because frankly there’s no doubt whatsoever that the United States has convened a grand jury to look at prosecuting Assange and Wikileaks and has every intention of extraditing him to the United States. So all of that is very, very difficult.

You can see a kind of Lockerbie solution. The alleged Lockerbie bomber, Mr. Megrahi, was tried in the Hague under Scottish law by Scottish judges because they didn’t want to send him to Scotland and they agreed to hold the trial on mutual premises, and the Dutch agreed that a court in the Hague could actually be in effect under Scottish law for the period of the trial. It’s not the happiest precedent, because I think the trial was itself a stitch-up and a miscarriage of justice, but it does set a precedent for somebody being tried by another state on somebody else’s territory, so there is a precedent in international law if people were looking for that.

Now, as I’ve said myself, my own view is that a condition of any trial should be that it should be public. I think this case is so high-profile that people are entitled to know what evidence has been given, are entitled to know what the defense is, and frankly the defense is so strong that it would make it very, very difficult to do a stitch-up conviction. So something along those lines.

I really do not know at this stage what the end game is. The hope of the British government is that the Ecuadorean government will change. There’s an election coming up in Ecuador in the not so distant future. The British and American governments are relying on President Correa’s opponents — and his opponents are of course backed by the CIA anyway – will manage to win that election and then cancel his diplomatic asylum and hand him over, and that’s the end game as far as the British and Americans are concerned. So my guess is that they will wait for the outcome of the Ecuadorean election. I don’t think they will make any compromise at all until after the Ecuadorean election, in the hope that the government of Ecuador changes and that they will get a, basically a US puppet administration in Ecuador which will just hand him over.

31:49 ONN: Well, thank you very much for speaking with us today, Mr. Murray. It’s been fascinating and very informative. And thank you to our viewers. Thank you for watching this ONN interview. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Okay.

CRAIG MURRAY: Thank you.

* I have added in italics phrases on one particular point where I thought my meaning was obvious in context, but evidently from comments on another thread it was not.


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211 thoughts on “The Assange case

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  • elizabeth carson

    see armen victorian and his book mind controllers …..he had a lot of problems…also, when he worked for kew gardens and false charges on him that were overturned.

  • nevermind

    The Guardian and the BBC are guilty of mind controlling, with the troll in controlling being the active part.

    Since the start of Breivig’s court case, from day one, despite the objections of many, the BBC, just as that rag of left leaning right wing thinkers, have perpetuated the arch symbols of fascists, their fisted salute. hey could have chosen to not transmit5 it, but were obliged by the MI 6 handlers, most likely, to persist in this form of slow manipulation of already challenged minds.

    If Britain has a problems with a rabid EDL and BNP and national front, its down to these MSM institutions, and others, especially the BBC, promoting their messages on as much bandwidth, as they can get away with..
    Not even at the sentencing was this policy changed, a full blown salute and kiss kiss of thanks for the BBC, who will now have no moral legs to stand on to argue their continued existence in this form. The BBC needs to be broken up!

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/sep/01/far-right-support-anders-breivik

  • AAMVN

    Thanks from me too – very hard to get this to stream and the download button doesn’t work from here.

    I too think open jury trials are the only fair trial. What they have in Sweden is completely unfair to the defendent.

    Years ago, I was a juror in a case where a young man was accused of assaulting (ABH) his common law wife. We listened to about 4 days of evidence and it boiled down to ‘he said – she said’. We acquitted after about an hour ‘deliberating.’

    Were Assange’s case to be brought before a UK jury I think a conviction would be impossible, regardless of the definition of rape. The Police/prosecution would know this and not waste time on it. Only if you have a non-jury system can cases like this be brought and argued against ‘common sense’.

    I wish it were possible to protect women from sexual assaults like is alleged here, or from ‘sex after pleading’ but I don’t think it is logically possible without punishing a lot of innocent men on the evidence of vindictive women.

    I don’t think there are many cases of ‘false accusations’ of rape but it is an argument any defence must be allowed to present.

    The UK media embargo on the names of the two women is a cynical attempt to hide the controversies from casual observers. Anybody who does even a cursory internet search on the case will come across the two names and rapidly come to the conclusion that the investigation was at least bungled or more probably somehow fabricated.

    I watched the newsnight clip on youtube and was amazed Craig Murray was able to keep his temper when dealing with the woman interviewee in particular but also the interviewer. Well done. Of course getting angry would be counterproductive but I am at times in awe of the restraint practiced in the face of such flagrantly obtuse behaviour.

  • Patrick Haseldine

    LOCKERBIE SOLUTION IS NOT A PRECEDENT

    You can see a kind of Lockerbie solution. The alleged Lockerbie bomber, Mr. Megrahi, was tried in the Hague under Scottish law by Scottish judges because they didn’t want to send him to Scotland and they agreed to hold the trial on mutual premises, and the Dutch agreed that a court in the Hague could actually be in effect under Scottish law for the period of the trial. It’s not the happiest precedent, because I think the trial was itself a stitch-up and a miscarriage of justice, but it does set a precedent for somebody being tried by another state on somebody else’s territory, so there is a precedent in international law if people were looking for that.

    The Lockerbie solution is not a precedent at all, Craig, because Mr Megrahi was not tried in the Hague. In fact, the Lockerbie trial was conducted from May 2000 to January 2001 at Camp Zeist, a former US Air Force base in the Netherlands which, for the duration of the trial, became British territory.

    As you can verify from this extract from Facebook article entitled BLACKOUT OF MANDELA BLUEPRINT FOR LOCKERBIE JUSTICE by Patrick Haseldine, Emeritus Professor of Lockerbie Studies

    BLUEPRINT

    In 1992, Nelson Mandela declared that the Lockerbie trial ought to be conducted in a neutral country by independent judges:

    “In the present climate of suspicion and fear it is important that the trial should not be intended to humiliate a head of state [Muammar Gaddafi]. It should not only be fair and just, but must be seen to be fair and just. This must be in the context of respect for the sovereignty of all countries.”

    In 1997, President Mandela proceeded to chide Britain, France and the United States:

    “No one nation should be complainant, prosecutor and judge” in the criminal trials of the two Libyans accused of sabotaging Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988 and of the six Libyans accused of French airline UTA Flight 772 bombing in West Africa on 19 September 1989.

    Nelson Mandela’s strictures and judicial advice went completely and deliberately unheeded in both cases.

    BLACKOUT

    Robert Black, Emeritus Professor of Scots Law at Edinburgh University, was recruited by South African intelligence and financed by tycoon Tiny Rowland to frustrate all of Nelson Mandela’s plans for Lockerbie justice:

    a. Black ensured that the Lockerbie trial was not held in a neutral country. Instead, he arranged for the trial to be conducted from May 2000 to January 2001 at Camp Zeist, a former US Air Force base in the Netherlands which, for the duration of the trial, became British territory;

    b. Black decreed that Scotland’s Crown Office would be the ‘complainant’ at the trial;

    c. Black arranged for Scotland’s Lord Advocate (Colin Boyd) to be the ‘prosecutor’ at the trial; and,

    d. Black insisted that – instead of ‘independent judges’ at the trial – all four Judges (Lords Sutherland, Coulsfield, MacLean and Abernethy) had to be from Scotland.

    Although one of the two accused Libyans was found not guilty of the Lockerbie bombing, it was thanks to Professor Black that the other Libyan, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was found guilty.

    The Facebook article can be read in full here: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4009030178371&l=6662cb7fb9.

  • Frazer

    I actually blagged my way into the UK Embassy in Kabul and sat at the desk of the Ambassador…in 2000….just thought I would throw that in here…

  • Fedup

    Britain has a problems with a rabid EDL and BNP and national front,

    My dear German chap, British politics would not work without the above unsavoury elements. If these did not exist , the British government would have had to invent these and man them with their own personnel.

    Now that you are getting involved in due time you will find the “barbarians at the gate” stories have helped many of incompetent carpetbaggers into seats of gravy and Sunday lunches.

    The simplicity of it all is unbelievable, Try and read up on “operation Gladio” if you have not already.

    Norwegians were getting punished for their misdemeanour’s Breivik was not suppose to end up living and sitting in the court, the equations were all about he gets killed and the mystery of the carnage then could be played for any number of ends.

    A curious oversight, in this land and everywhere else, every poxy college has software that sniffs out plagiarism, we all know Breivik did not write his own manifesto, but he lifted the text from various “sources” when it was the turn of the ” al Qaidy” the book of “al Qaidy” was outlawed and anyone associated with it, were picked up and heir homes taken down brick by brick to look for “evidence”.

    No one has even tried to point fingers at certain bogs, and certain characters on the Internet who were the mentors of this terrorist guy, who is now no longer a terrorist!

  • Mary

    You could have taken over Frazer. I see there was no representation in that year. They don’t stay long do they?

    1987–1989: Ian Mackley (chargé d’affaires)
    1989–2000: No representation
    2001–2002: Stephen Evans (chargé d’affaires)[13]
    2002–2003: Ronald Nash[14]
    2003–2006: Rosalind Marsden
    2006–2007: Stephen Evans
    2007–2009: Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles
    2009–2010: Mark Sedwill
    2010–2012: Sir William Patey
    2012–present: Sir Richard Stagg[15]

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ambassadors_of_the_United_Kingdom_to_Afghanistan

  • Jay

    @nevermind

    Breviks actions were calculated madness.

    he is a sick imdividual and as.usual.is a product
    of society.

    Read counter_currents.com

  • CE

    Far too much imaginative and elaborate conspiracy theory stuff in there for me I’m afraid. CIA? Check. Honey trap? Check. Neo-cons and Karl Rove? Check. Secret show trials? Check.

    Why should JA even have to face these ridiculous charges from this corrupt backwater of Europe? Never mind the alleged victims; Craig has obviously decided the entire case is a set up between the corrupt Swedish justice system and the CIA. 🙄

    These women should have their day in court without being denigrated left, right and centre as CIA agents or worse. Do you have any proof of a CIA funded honey trap Craig, or is this just a ‘nudge-nudge, wink-wink’ attempt to smear the alleged victims of sex crimes?

  • N_

    @Craig, I’m sure your statement that “the government of course is owned by the same people who own the newspapers” will have been noted both in MI5 and in Aaronowitch land.

    You are of course 100% right. The state authorities in the UK serve big business no less than they do in the US, Dubai, or wherever.

    You’ve told the truth; you’re a very naughty boy! 🙂

    For any radical critic, realising that big business owns the state is the big breakthrough.

    All ‘professional’ opinions, whether of ministerial civil servants, newspaper editors, chief scientists, university vice-chancellors etc., operate only within this environment. And when things are functioning as per normal, they can only strengthen it. That’s their job. That’s what they do. They’re all hypocrites, moral cowards, and creeps – the whole damned lot of them. At least until they walk out and tell things how they are, as you did.

    Sadly for all too many would-be radical critics, the breakthrough never occurs. It makes a nonsense of the usual kind of political activity, whether focused on parliamentary democracy or geared towards taking part in ‘national conversations’ defined by talking heads in the media – even when participation is active, well-meaning, and creative. A pox on that!

    As for Armen Victorian, the orchid smuggling charge he faced was bizarre! I seem to recall he also found a bug of a non-entomological type.

  • bert

    @CE I shouldn’t reply to trolls, but…you say “ These women should have their day in court So you’re not expecting the public authorities to prosecute Assange for rape, then?

    @Craig and @Patrick – the Lockerbie trial was a complete travesty. There’s a limit in Scots law (or was then) whereby defendants are only allowed to be remanded in custody for a maximum of 110 days after committal. If the trial doesn’t start on time, they must be freed and can’t ever be tried on those charges.

    But the Scottish judiciary does’t lag behind its English counterpart in the corruption stakes! What struck me in the Lockerbie case was how the British authorities ranted for years that the men should stand trial in a Scottish court, and then when they eventually got hold of them, they had to adjourn the trial for ages because they didn’t have enough evidence to proceed!

    That was an in-your-face abuse of the judicial process. How the hell can you know you want to prosecute someone unless you’ve got sufficient material to bring as evidence against them? Actually got it in your hands, not the promise of it. What is that you’ve got instead? Whatever the CIA tell you you’ve got?

    Still, British weapons exports to Libya picked up. Ker-ching! All right for some, eh?

  • John Goss

    O/T but important! Today there is an Observer article with Desmond Tutu claiming Bush and Blair should be tried for war crimes. A comment, the 6th one down using oldest first sort parameters, said that Blair should also be tried for not allowing an inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly. This comment was recommended by 2045 people in a very short period of time. Naturally it got removed by a moderator.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/sep/02/tony-blair-iraq-war-desmond-tutu?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038

    The Huff Post has gone with it on Bush.

    {http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/02/desmond-tutu-bush-blair-trial-iraq_n_1850079.html?&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009}

  • Zoologist

    @John Goss
    I saw it too. There were several replies with the text quoted later on in the thread too.
    I suppose they have been tidied up as well by now.
    Loads of great comments with thousands of ticks. I hope Blair is looking over his shoulder.

  • John Goss

    @Zoologist, if you remember when Craig Murray was trying to get a story published which showed that there were significantly more meetings between, Fox, Werrity, Gould and cronies, comments at The Guardian were being removed faster than we could get them up. Same with Atlantic Bridge. The reason, according to one moderator I managed to contact, was fear of legal action. The article was eventually published by the Independent. No legal action ensued. They only take legal action if it is not true. But newspapers have an editorial policy, and you’re right, all the other comments have gone too.

  • Mark Golding - Children of Iraq Association

    Nevermind,

    Mind control indeed, although not this mind which prompted the following complaint:

    Dear Lord Patten,

    I am again disappointed with the BBC program guidelines that fails to prevent hypocrisy such as the naming of an alleged rape victim.

    Gavin Esler castigated Craig Murray for such naming on the BBC Newsnight program when in fact the BBC had already named her on BBC Cuban News:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/mundo/cartas_desde_cuba/2011/02/no_es_para_menos.html

    It would appear program managers are not complying to the standards of a public broadcaster and this incident together with the deception by the BBC in transmitting a disturbing image of a massacre in Syria that was later revealed as an image from the Iraq war concludes to me that these managers are biased and influenced by the establishment’s protocols and obligations thus prohibiting the truth from reaching a wide UK license paying public.

    To address this situation and inform the public of these and other severe deficits I will publish a web-site together with social networking pages to expose the independence or not of BBC news, current affairs and polemic interviews.

    Your sincerely,

  • Zoologist

    @John Goss
    Yes, I remember. Same with Locherbie a few years ago.
    I think the legality issue is an excuse too. My theory is it’s to hide the fact that such “conspiracy theories” have huge widespread support now. It’s not just the batshit lunatic fringe asking questions any more – 3000 odd Guardian readers think so too in a few hours.

  • Clayton Wentworth

    Any – and all – of the commenters should be under no misunderstanding whatsoever.

    Please DO NOT question Craig’s integrity in this matter.

    This is – 150% – and without a shadow of a doubt – a set-up against Julian & Wikileaks. People should be under no illusions. Julian is in grave danger from these Zionist Neocons. They are extremely ruthless people – and will stop at nothing to get what they want.

    To confirm how evil they are – view #unspeakableevil@TheGlobalFund – in 4 parts – view in HD. Keypoint – Osama had nothing whatsoever to do with 911. Find out who did.

    The world needs to speak with one voice on these matters.

  • Mary

    John You might have missed my posts on an earlier thread when I said then that there were nearly 800 comments. I also noticed that comment about Dr. Kelly.

    Mary
    2 Sep, 2012 – 8:14 am
    You remember that Archbishop Tutu pulled out of a seminar in Johannesburg at which Blair was collecting yet more shekels.

    He has now written this in the Observer today.

    Why I had no choice but to spurn Tony Blair
    I couldn’t sit with someone who justified the invasion of Iraq with a lie

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/02/desmond-tutu-tony-blair-iraq

    ‘On these grounds alone, in a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague.’

    Tutu names Bush and Blair. He gets the number of dead in Iraq wrong. He quotes the Iraq Body Count study. The Lancet study produced a much higher number
    ~~~~
    Mary
    2 Sep, 2012 – 11:34 am
    Helm of the Observer finds Archbishop Tutu’s call for Bush and Blair to go The Hague ‘startling’.

    ‘But it is Tutu’s call for Blair and Bush to face justice in The Hague that is most startling. Claiming that different standards appear to be set for prosecuting African leaders and western ones, he says the death toll during and after the Iraq conflict is sufficient on its own for Blair and Bush to be tried at the ICC.’

    Not at all startling to us, the 99%, Mr Helm.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/sep/02/tony-blair-iraq-war-desmond-tutu

    800 comments there already. It was posted just after midnight.
    ~~~~~

  • Jim Larkin

    I see that Desmond Tutu has denounced Bliar and Bush as “war criminals”. The media hacks are gobsmacked. What? Come again?

    Bless him.

  • Tris

    Craig: I completely believe all you are saying, but there is one question that is niggling me…what has Sweden to gain from this?

  • name

    its not what they stand to gain its what they stand to lose

    thats a nice (insert nice thing here)it would be a shame if it burned down

    is much more the gangsta style

    rather than

    do you want some puppies for your (insert nice thing here)

    first post, recent find for me , great site

    keep up the good work Craig

  • John Goss

    Tris, it is not a matter of what Sweden will get from it, it is a matter of what it will lose if it does not comply with US demands. The deal is probably already done. When Jordan failed to endorse US exemption for war crimes from the ICC (which could otherwise in theory try George W. Bush) the US threatened it with the withdrawal of 1/5th of its national budget. Jordan complied pretty quickly.

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