I put Straw, Blair and Blears in the dock for torture. My article on the leader page of the Mail on Sunday.
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Many congratulations, Craig.
Yes, and credit where credit’s due, hats off to the Daily Mail.
Bravo!
“The Mail on Sunday has a four-page spread on the allegations, featuring a man who says he was tortured by UK special forces, and one of the Libyans who was handed to the Tripoli regime.
It carries an opinion piece by former British diplomat Craig Murray, who says Tony Blair and Jack Straw should face trial for their collusion with the US programme.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs/the_papers/
“To complete the process, they then trashed my reputation with smears: the stressful end to my first marriage, and the start of my relationship with my current wife, Nadira, found its way into the press in the most lurid terms. False stories about my drinking and fabrications about sleeping with prostitutes also appeared. All of this was to distract from the truth: that hundreds of British members of the security services, diplomats and civil servants co-operated with the CIA torture programme.”
There was another article in the Mail about you in 2007 which rather gave the impression that the information had come first hand from Nadira and was to publicise and was contained in her one woman show.
Was that a fabrication?
Can anyone give detail of Malcolm Rifkind attacking me on Radio 4 this morning (Nevermind’s comment previous thread). The BBC still won’t let me on but are allowing people to attack me by name!!!
Read your blog regularly and am so pleased for you that at long last this has come into the open. Well done
Rilke’s link to the BBC review (written by Andy Sully) says:
“Mr Straw says he has scrupulously followed the law at all times.”
No, Mr Straw does not say that. In fact his blanket responses appear to have been carefully drafted precisely not to say that. Here is what Mr Straw says:
“At all times I was scrupulous in seeking to carry out my duties in accordance with the law.”
He doesn’t say he followed the law. He says he sought to do so, which is not at all the same thing. I would be interested to know why his office uses that particular wording.
Kind regards, John
Fred, not it was a particularly nasty bit of a journalism by a female journalist who pretended to befriend Nadira. After the media had been tipped off by No. 10.
But what has my perfectly legal love life got to so with torture. How does this conversation happen?
“You tortured people to death”
“Yes, but you visited a strip club”.
And why do people like you seek to perpetuate it.
You forgot the side profile mugshots and the numbers underneath. What disturbs me are the number of people who actually support torture, this from Informed comment,
“With a few noble exceptions like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Republican Party spokesmen, Republican politicians, and Republican media like Fox Cable News, defended torture. This defense was mounted from so many directions by so many Republicans that it now seems indisputable that the party stands for the principle of rectal hydration. Since torture is illegal in American law, presumably they want to repeal the 5th and 8th amendments to the constitution”.http://www.juancole.com/2014/12/platform-corruption-elections.html
“And why do people like you seek to perpetuate it.”
I don’t, which is why I didn’t post a link to the article.
I couldn’t care less what you did then, what concerns me is what you say now and if it is true or not.
Brilliant! You’re getting there
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/04/in_praise_of_ma/
Bravo, Mr Murray. What is depressing is how many bestial readers of the Daily Mail support torture.
well done Craig! The Mail (and Mail on Sunday) just once in a while do the right thing. It’s wonderful that they do it here, and redeem themselves a bit from all their other racist scaremongering.
The interview was this morning on Broadcasting House 9am,about 8.30 min. into the interview, featuring Malcolm Rifkind trying to make out that Hazel Blair’s self gratification was anything untoward and wrong, the little rascal.
Fred why do we need another regurgitation of tabloid stuff which was wrong then? by you? what is to do with you or anyone else?
You would not like to have your relationship with your wife/pets/chickens/sheep, made public, because somebody thinks your gardening is superior to his and he wants to smear you.
And then in ten years time some other scrot pipes up and regurgitates it all over again saying he has seen you stuffing the hind legs of a sheep into your wellies.
Briar.
Yep. And UKIP.
RT and Daily Mail, competing for Most Radical. Good job Craig. How did you persuade?
Am well pleased this information is now in the public domain. I hope you stand in Jim Murphy’s seat – it would be the ultimate hubris to detach a member of the Labour party government responsible for condoning this vile torture, from his unending expenses. We have to remember that we, Scottish taxpayers, are paying for salaries, pensions, perks and expenses of those complicit in the rendition and torture and so also have become complicit in this heinous practise.
Well done Craig,very well done.
I’ve never understood the nauseating logic of torture apologists i.e.:
“We’re fighting these nasty chaps in the name of freedom,democracy and civilisation but we have to torture because they do it as well..”
Simply illogical as well as deeply disturbing.
Complicity in torture is a crime in the UK. I have given sworn evidence to the detectives involved, who recently passed a file to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
Astonishingly, at the CPS the dossier has been given not to the branch that deals with misconduct in public office, but to the counter-terrorism division. This focuses attention away from the crime of torture and on to the alleged criminal intentions of the actual victims of the crime they are supposed to be considering.
The police think it will all be quietly swept under the carpet
……………………………………..
The final sentence of your paragraph, probably hold the most truth, I fail to see how the Metropolitan Police will make inroads on this investigations.
Is their any written evidence that the police could use, apart from yourself is their anyone else, who could verify your findings, and would they have the courage to come forward like you did.
Just how will the police go about questioning Blair and Straw, when Blair won’t even appear at a Q&A session at Westminster, even though he’s been summoned twice.
I’m very pleased for you Craig that after many years of scorn and derision from the established your claims have been vindicated, as for justice, I wouldn’t set my sights too high.
Craig
Would it be worth my putting in an FoI request to the BBC to see any internal memos relating to whether you should or should not be invited to speak/ be interviewed? That may need to apply to particular documented invitations withdrawn, as well as to any general policy guidelines, on which I may need your help.
Others with more experience of FoI requests than I do, may be able to give advice on wording. I don’t expect a helpful response, but would like it to be sufficiently unhelpful or weasel-worded as to make an appeal to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO – my alter ego)possible.
Let’s all try to get on BBC phone-in problems where we tell the triage sub-producer a n acceptable comment we are going to make on the CIA torture report, but then get in on air a crisp regret at the BBC’s collusion for years with those who would silence articulate and knowledgeable torture whistleblowers like you.
Iain
The FOI Act has an exception for journalism. The BBC have been asked before, about the time my Question Time appearance was cancelled at the last minute, and refused to comply because it was “journalism”. Which apparently means the same as “censorship”.
The fact that this has got to feature on mainstream BT media is nothing short of a miracle.
Hopefully it will be the crack in Westminsters despicable dam.
Great job Craig!!!
Vacuous torture apologist bint Carole Malone in the Sunday Mirror:
“Ordinary people can’t handle the truth of what happens in war…”
Oh i see …is it only special people like you that can carole?
What an ignorant shrill harridan.
Maybe now is the time for your Question Time appearance.
If it’s all right to torture people in time of war, then the state should just say so. Say so straight out, and then let’s have no more humbug about it. The Government should present law to Parliament, or state in its manifesto that it will, to the effect that, in time of war, whether that be a war on terror or a war against another state, it is sometimes necessary to use torture, and they want explicit authorisation to do that. And then we can see what the British people think.
Kind regards, John
More UK torture allegations…
Some *interesting* quotes from Mark Allen FCO and others…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/iraq-torture-claims-new-allegations-against-british-soldiers-to-go-to-international-criminal-court-9923409.html
“If it’s all right to torture people in time of war”
They should have the courage of their convictions. I think if their confidence in legality of enhanced interrogation (double-speak) they should demand their day in court.
Craig
Thanks. I rather feared that the theoretical concept of a free market in information had even more severe limits when applied to the media than when applied to governments, commercial companies, academics or NGOs.
However, I hope others will adopt my suggestion of comments to BBC (and commercial) phone-in programmes. Letters to editors of newspapers and journals are also worth trying. Let’s have three targets: Strictly, BB and QT – the first two might open the way to the third. Maybe you could try to persuade the Mail on Sunday (especially while it remains so keen to annoy Paul Dacre) to make you its Resident Dissident columnist?