UPDATE I today received a prison sentence of eight months for my reporting of the defence case in the Alex Salmond trial. I have a three week stay while we apply to this same court for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court. My appeal will be based on the simple fact that I did not identify anybody. It will also be based on the right to report the defence case being denied by an extraordinary, impossibly strict application of “jigsaw identification”, and on fair process not having been observed.
Should this court refuse permission to appeal, which seems not unlikely, I will in all probability be jailed while we apply direct to the Supreme Court for permission, which will take some months.
I am afraid I find myself once again obliged to ask you for funding for the appeal. We have raised about £70,000 but are likely to need, at the least, double that.
UPDATE The defence fund has received £46,520 in the 24 hours since it was relaunched to fund the appeal to the Supreme Court. That does not get us there, but it is a good start on our way as the appeal continues. Over 2,000 people have donated, with the smallest donation being 82p and the largest £1,000. Every penny is greatly appreciated. I should make plain that despite the astronomical costs, some members of our legal team have been working substantially below their normal rates and with time donated free.
One donation of £500 from a gentleman I know, came with a note that explained that Willie MacRae had lent him £100 shortly before his highly suspect death. He regarded the £500 as repaying that debt, and was sure Willie would approve of the use of his money. That brought tears to my eyes.
UPDATE ENDS
On Friday I shall be sentenced, very possibly to prison, for contempt of court by “jigsaw identification”. While I do not believe anybody has ever been imprisoned for “jigsaw identification” before, my entire prosecution has been so perverse that I cannot imagine why they have done it unless that is the intention.
With enormous diffidence and frankly embarrassment, I find myself yet again obliged to ask people to contribute towards my defence fund before my hearing next Friday, to enable us to move forward with an appeal to the Supreme Court. Legal bills actually paid to date amount to £161,000, with about eight thousand not billed yet. Non-legal costs, including the opinion poll, total around £9,000. The total raised by the defence fund to date is around £143,000 with the balance of around £18,000 paid so far having come from my personal pocket.
The practical result of the judgement against me is that it is virtually impossible to report the defence in any sexual allegation case; as witness the fact that I was ordered by the court to take down every single word of my articles covering the defence case and evidence.
The judges ruled that publishing any information that could theoretically assist not the public, but literally a colleague who worked in the same office, to identify a complainant, would constitute jigsaw identification. They also ruled that jigsaw identification was committed if you gave a piece of information which could identify a complainant in conjunction with information that could be found anywhere else, no matter how obscure. For example, if information from page 19 of the Inverurie Herald six years ago, combined with information from page 178 of a book, combined with something I published could lead to an identification, I am guilty regardless of whether or not anybody did in practice actually piece together these obscure sources of information.
In fact the court heard nothing that would pass as evidence in court that any individual had in fact identified anybody as a result of my articles. There was zero evidence of harm. What has been harmful is the gross censorship of my journalism, with my entire daily account of the defence case removed, and my critique of the Garavelli article removed. In consequence, it is once again virtually impossible for anybody to discover WHY Alex Salmond was acquitted, enabling the massive state and media led campaign to claim he was really guilty – which sadly appears, with the counter-narrative banned, to have acquired great traction.
You will recall that I commissioned a Panelbase opinion poll which proved that a significant 8% of the Scottish population – that is around 400,000 adults – believed they had been able to identify one or more of the complainants in the Salmond case from publication, but when asked stated that the source of this caption was overwhelmingly the mainstream media.
Well I decided to re-run the opinion poll to see if anything had changed. These were the results. 11% of the Scottish adult population – that is half a million adults – by now believe they know an identity. This is how they know:
It is perfectly clear and entirely consistent with the first poll. 54% of people who believe they know an identity got their information from the newspapers. 27% got it from TV and radio (there may be overlap between these groups).
Yet no newspaper or TV journalist or editor is being prosecuted.
Not even Dani Garavelli, who is overwhelmingly named as the source of information – by fifteen different people – is being prosecuted.
So let us be perfectly clear. The three top sources named for identification were
Dani Garavelli – by a country mile
Kirsty Wark
BBC
None of whom is being prosecuted. Garavelli has published an entire series of major articles amplifying the prosecution case against Salmond, in Tortoise media, twice in Scotland on Sunday and in the London Review of Books, plus many other well paid commissions. She has effectively made a fat living out of an entirely one-sided account that claims miscarriage of justice simply by omitting all the defence evidence. In so doing she has plainly been much more credibly guilty of jigsaw identification than I. On the other hand, my long critique of Garavelli’s first Scotland on Sunday article, which interpolated the defence evidence which contradicted her account and proved that the jury was right, has now been banned, censored and desroyed by the court, the 21st century equivalent of burning the manuscript in the public square.
Garavelli has gone on to become media-puppet-in-chief to the Scottish government, producing a stream of adulatory articles about Nicola Sturgeon like this one about what a great constituency MSP Sturgeon is, which is (ahem) somewhat contrary to received wisdom.
Garavelli is protected because she is part of the inner circle, while I am prosecuted, when the mainstream media is not, because I am an opponent of the corrupt nexus of power that governs Scotland today. The official line is that through enthusiasm for Salmond’s cause I revealed information to the public that the mainstream media did not. That is a fiction the Scottish legal system has chosen to adopt, and for which I will be sentenced on Friday.
All the real world evidence shows that is untrue. I revealed far less than the mainstream media revealed. This is a shameless and openly political prosecution of one of the very few platforms of any size which explained the truth about why Alex Salmond was acquitted by the jury. That is my “crime”.
We have to get this out of the foetid corruption of Edinburgh and into Strasbourg. That is only possible via the UK Supreme Court, and my legal team are now working on that appeal. I urge you to subscribe not only because of the particular injustice of my own case, but also because this ruling puts a huge power in the hands of the state by making it next to impossible to report the defence in cases of sexual allegation. As such allegations are the favoured tool of the state against perceived dissident threats (cf Julian Assange), this is very dangerous indeed.
You can contribute to my defence fund here. I am extremely grateful to those who have and I want to stress that I absolutely do not want anybody to contribute if it causes them even the slightest financial difficulty. I am afraid to say that the amounts we need to raise remain ridiculous; this fact is of course all part of the implementation of suppression, by “lawfare”.
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The very best of luck that they may think better of such an injustice , but riddled with lies and corruption who can be sure considering their malice . Small contribution sent as always
I personally think that throwing people in jail for publishing articles the government doesn’t like is left wing politics in a nutshell. But for what it’s worth, I don’t take any pleasure from it. Donation on its way.
It’s good of you to donate to Craig but your comment about left wing politics is ridiculous and false in the extreme.
Athanasius,
Sometimes the left and sometimes the right wing do ‘lock ups/shut ups’.
Equal service providers – if you piss ’em off enough.
I must differ with both you and Margaret. I don’t want to get into a spat about this due to the circumstances – for now, this is about Craig, not me, but I will state what I see as being the case and leave it at that. The left sees itself as part of an historical march and as such, entitled to twist the rules in the service of some greater, noble good. “Craig is in the way, therefore Craig is evil, therefore we’re justified in removing him by any means necessary. We hold the levers of government and law, therefore we will use them accordingly.” That’s a massive over-simplification, but the point is that when the right do it, they tend to acknowledge to themselves the wickedness of it and, I would argue, are therefore much less likely to do it in the first place. When the left do it, they’re masters of rationalization and will do it much more frequently because of that.
this is not supported by evidence.
It is no more than a difference of perspective. The overbearing left sees itself as the irresistible force, the overbearing right sees itself as the immovable object. To the one, those such as Craig are obstacles to be swept out of the way, to the other those such as Craig are attackers to be repelled.
Donation made via bank Craig. Couldnt get PayPal to work. All the very best Craig for Friday & for your appeal.
Expect they’ll lock you up specifically to make an example of you to encourage everyone else to toe their line. Not going to happen is it? This is Scotland in 21st century, not a pleasant place to be.
Hope your family has lots of support.Take care.
What I don’t understand is why our putative left has remained silent throughout this travesty. Are you not left-wing enough Craig? Remember our mutual friend Edward Teague? Then it was Guatanamo, now it’s MUCH closer to home!
‘If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own…. For if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.’ — James Baldwin
‘First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out.
And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.’ — Pastor Martin Niemoller]
PS: sent you some dosh
Craig is supported by the left, not the faux left. Don’t trust the label, trust the behaviour.
Something not right here. How can it be that the FCO and Shai Masot fail to close you down, but Nicola Sturgeon and Pritti Patel succeed?
There is some serious 4th generation warfare going on here. Sentence first, verdict after, was a parody on Victorian megalomaniac excesses of social inequality but this appears to.be actually happening in GloBalised , GordonBrownised Scotland.
All I can say is that leaving the EU and finding the magic money tree seems to have gone to Bojo’s brain and he is now ruling by World King decree.
Scotland, like Saudi Arabia’s Aramco is big enough to be floated, not by real money , but by a bad heroin trip in which BoJo says Be! and every body else has to pretend that what he is dreaming is true.
‘Tis done.
It is astonishing that the country that was once home to Enlightenment has descended into a one party state which threatens jail, and seeks to impoverish, a citizen for reporting the defence case at a trial ostensibly held in public. And even worse, none of its media outlets cares a stuff about it, or bothers to report the basic facts. Apparently they don’t care if they are in future threatened with jail if they report on similar cases in the future. They are unaware of any principles involved.
The pretence that this is about ‘jigsaw identification’ is utterly hollow, as Craig sets out. Garavelli is the most heinous of them, but there have been plenty of identifiers in the mainstream press. As for the argument that something Craig reported could be joined up with any other source of information to identify the accusers – if that were taken seriously, nobody could report a thing about it, since anything at all could be cross referenced with far more serious breaches of the rule to identify the miscreants. That would also mean that any source which could theoretically be thus used should be prosecuted, which if followed would lead to hundreds of court cases. And yet, there is but one.
The sneering arrogance the judges displayed at the hearing was remarkable for its obvious bias and determination to prosecute Craig without any consideration of his robust and detailed defence. It is certainly an abuse of power and a grievous insult to the judicial and legal apparatus in Scotland. Which now looks like the worst of failed, despotic states with corrupted state power controlling the judiciary and the media.
What an inheritance from the likes of Hume and Smith. Deplorable, deeply concerning and clearly unjust. And on top of it all sits Queen Nikla and her praetorian guard, smug and silent over issues far more serious than her obsessions with gender identity and what people say in private.
Well said. The prosecutors and judges in this case shame Scotland. But they are serving a puppet mistress whose deeds would shame all the devils in hell.
Ian
The cornerstones of Scottish Justice , Lord Advocate and Justice Minister , are not occupied by people from Scottish Christian heritage, but from far away lands with opposing values to Britain. You cannot get blood out of a stone.
However the architects of unjust court proceedings have no control over the Judges themselves. We have to put our faith in the Judges’ integrity on the day.
I wonder what the response of the Scottish legal establishment would be to being sued for ‘failure to provide a trial by jury for a political trial’?
It’s quite clear that judges now can be bought, so they do not represent exponents of justice, they represent the lowly executioners of the State punishment system.
To my mind, there now needs to be a robust legal challenge to their right to hold legal office….
Ian, I completely agree. Very well said. This is bloody shocking and it is a damned disgrace. That C21st Scotland has done this to one of the most prominent and respected whistleblowers of recent decades is deeply embarrassing and is a gross indictment of the state of freedom of expression in this country.
Hope you win the case against you, made a donation to assist. Best of Luck.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-56170459
“A man has been jailed for six months for tweeting the names of women who gave evidence against former first minister Alex Salmond at his trial.Clive Thomson, 52, admitted breaching a contempt of court order when he named the women on Twitter on two occasions in August last year.”
This person was jailed for six months for publicly NAMING the complainants on two occasions. In Scotland that means three months detention in practice. He will by now have served his sentence and is a free man. There was no fine, unlimited or otherwise.
Lady Dorrian and her two judge cohorts might well want to impose a more draconian sentence for Craig’s so called ‘jigsaw identification’, but that would surely be perverse, particularly since no prosecution led evidence identified anyone who completed the ‘jigsaw’ solely on Craig’s blog information?
We need to wait and see what penalties the Judges impose before making decisions about appeals. The Supreme Court would cost confetti money.
It is probably safe to assume by this stage that the ruling will be perverse.
“no prosecution led evidence identified anyone who completed the ‘jigsaw’ solely on Craig’s blog information”
This is so. In addition to the lack of actual evidence or proof, the judges verdict was based as I recall on their so-called ‘objective test’, which in fact appears rather subjective, and hardly a ‘test’ at all. The other worrying aspect of this is the risk of ‘apparent bias’ in that at least two of the three judges were already very familiar with the case (trial and judicial review) and hence would know who many of the complainers are, which would be expected to assist the judges in undertaking some form of jigsaw identification.
This may be relevant from https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/law/automatic-disqualification-and-apparent-bias-/64222.article :
“The modern law of apparent bias was settled by Lord Hope in Porter v Magill [2001] UKHL 67, where Lord Hope indicated that the ‘question is whether the fair-minded and informed observer, having considered the facts, would conclude that there was a real possibility that the tribunal was biased’. In a subsequent case (Davidson v Scottish Ministers [2004] UKHL 34) Lord Bingham remarked that what ‘…disqualifies the judge is the presence of some factor which could prevent the bringing of an objective judgment to bear, which could distort the judge’s judgment’. For: ‘In maintaining the confidence of the parties and the public in the integrity of the judicial process, it is necessary that judicial tribunals should be independent and impartial, and also that they should appear to be so’. The judge must therefore ‘…be free of any influence which could prevent the bringing of an objective judgment to bear or which could distort the judge’s judgment, and must appear to be so’.”
Two prison packing lists, just in case:
http://prisonuk.blogspot.com/2014/10/off-to-prison-my-packing-list.html
https://metro.co.uk/2017/04/13/going-to-prison-heres-our-guide-to-what-to-pack-from-someone-who-has-done-time-6525882/
Top of the list seems to be a strong pair of flipflops and a pair of foam earplugs. Close to the top are a large comfy towel, trainers, but no hoodies.
Of course you’ll want plenty of pens and writing paper to do a Bertrand Russell, if you decide to write a book.
Donation made to a cause I heartily endorse.
I think they will not jail Mr. Murray, but order to close this website as harmful. Jigsaw identification is just a pretext. This website allows too many people speak out too many things too freely.
Tatyana-I think you are correct.
I think they will try and bankrupt him, a common enough tactic against dissidents. Whatever it takes, they want him silenced.
I don’t think they could do that, only order that articles considered to be contributng to jigsaw ID be removed which thay already have done and which has already been complied with.
I’ve put a small coin in the tin, good luck with any appeal.
The most important thing is that Craig continues to not to feel guilty in spite of the elaborate charade by Scotland’s big wigs to make him think he has done something wrong. Craig has been carefully stitched up by skilled manipulation artists. But he has done nothing wrong at all, other than lift his tin hat on a stick above the trenches and had it filled with bullet holes.
The main thing is to remember that turning one’s anger on oneself creates depression. He shouldn’t be angry for reaching out to help a companion who was under fire. He did an honourable and humane action, which will have its own reward.
Well said Giyane and thanks for the blessing.
Agreed, and in support, Craig.
Hi Craig, donated 50 quid but it seems a drop in the ocean. It would be useful to get update when you can to let us know how much you have raised…?
Have no income so only a small cash contribution. But they all help.
Keep positive. You and your ilk are our collective conscience. I agree with Tatyana; they may not imprison you but they’ll use your conviction as a pretext to close down your blog. And no one, with power, will do or say diddly squat. Thank you for your inordinate courage.
Donation made Craig. Good luck on Friday.
From all that you have ever written on this I for one am utterly clueless as the identity of any of the women accusers in the court case. I do though know who the Bastard-in-Chief is, Sturgeon! She and her crew have poisoned everything. When I see her coupon nowadays I feel nothing but a mixture of sheer revulsion and contempt for her, all she has done, and all she is planning to do. Could you imagine *that* having anything to do with setting up an independent Scotland? What a horror it would be.
A disgraceful affair which only leads to the conclusion that people in our legal system are themselves criminals who need to be removed from office. Roll on independence.
I will vote for you sir when you get out of the pokie.
Can’t someone use this evidence to bring a case or complaint against Garavelli? Seems to me, compared to Craig, there is overwhelming evidence of her/he/its guilt, even if only to illustrate the idiocy and farcically corrupt nature of the Scottish courts. Can we find Council amongst Craigs readers?
I would not raise a complaint against Garavelli because the entire premise is absurd. To me, after the verdict based on jury founding the accusers to be untruthful, the victim status is sufficiently doubtful to be a ridiculous basis for gag orders.
Anonymity of slanderers is an injury to the public.
On top of that, Garavelli herself was a jigsaw violator, if at all, and the concept of a jigsaw crime is ridiculous as well. We will see seesaw crimes, jack-in-the-box crimes, wibbly wobbly crimes, whatever the judges may invent.
From the point of view of logic, the powers that rule Scotland embarked on a secret show trial of the “enemy of the people”, and use the inherent contradiction between this being a show trial and a secret trial as a cudgel against anyone similarly inconvenient as the person accused in this trial. They torture logic first ….
Your’re not the one who should be embarrassed.
Fingers crossed for you!
Out of interest / concern, has Mr. Salmond made any statements about your predicament?
I do not believe prison will be the decision the charges are perverse they know it everyone knows it , they damaged Alex Salmonds reputation and will want to do the same to Craig Murray and anyone else who supported Alex Salmond.
An appeal is the way forward , no matter what the decision ,to push the law to its limit at which point it will not continue to support the farcical charges against Craig Murray.
Yes in the modern world you do need lots of money to get justice , the appeals process is good and necessary but it is a process that sometimes allows judges to get away with poor judgements , money to pursue justice to the highest courts should not be necessary it should be free but it isnt so when a case goes all the way and the law caves in and gives justice we the people win win win
This is all about Westminster trying to prevent Scottish Independence
I am very sorry this is happening, Craig.
I’d be interested in conjecture, from anyone, what is happening here. We are probably agreed that the British security services would cheerfully put Craig in prison if they could find an excuse to do so. But I think there is a view on this site that the judiciary hasn’t been completely compromised yet. For example, Craig was able to report that Lady Dorrian seemed to be fair and even-handed during the Salmond trial, and that Salmond was exonerated illustrates that the security services are not able to spin the wheel and get whatever result they want.
I wonder if the judges in this case see Craig’s work as a challenge to judicial authority, and some examples of citizen reporting (e.g. Tommy Robinson) do suggest that not all journalists are careful about court rules. But my main confusion is that the judges will be acutely aware that their rulings so far have a major impact on the ability to report for the defence, and while folks may call me naive, I am not sure it is merely a question of someone whispering in the judges’ ears. Is there any evidence that they are looking at the impact on investigative reportage, and do they care?
Just donated to the cause. Best of luck!!
Donated to the pot, sir, and will do so again on payday.
Wishing you well with your case on Friday! Fingers crossed that it will not be necessary for you to leave your family! I hope they are well and hoping you all have all the support you need! Will be following the case.
YOU KNOW WE’RE ALL BEHIND YOU. Take care.
Hi Craig, I hope everything will work out fine for you. Enjoy your posts, and sent some money to you as well.
In sentencing Scottish independence activist Clive Thompson, Lady Dorrian said that his actions were ‘clearly politically motivated, with a small ‘p’.
Clearly then to me the soul of her deliberation is Scottish independence and is the epitome of her accord with Privy Council, previously the court of last resort for devolution issues, most are about compliance with rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, brought into national law by the Devolution Acts and the Human Rights Act 1998.
I am convinced the case against Craig Murray follows the same approach and method used against Alex Salmond in an attempt to blunt aspirations and advocacy towards an independent Scotland.
Dear Craig,
I’m really sorry for your current predicament, and especially as you have gone above and beyond what most people would do, and at great cost to your own safety I imagine, in reporting on the case’s of Julian Assange and Alex Salmond – the world needs more people like you!
I will certainly be donating to your court fees, which I feel any person who believes in justice would do, not just for this particular case, but also as a positive action towards making society a more fair and better place for all people…
Kind regards,
Catherine Baillie
P. S – will set up a dd next month, as this month we painted our roof, so don’t have two spare
cents to rub together x
As others have mentioned, please keep us posted on progress. It has been gratifying to see how quickly you were able to raise money in the past, but Strasbourg will be an enormous cost.
Remind me again why Belarus is a dictatorship and Scotland is a democracy… funny thing is, you get to confront your accusers in a public trial in Belarus, and it’s perfectly legal to publish the name of all the adults involved. Oh, and you get elections on time, kids in school, and nobody gets arrested for a Tweet that criticizes Captain Tom.
Wow – interesting info about Captain Tom, @Sam. I hadn’t heard about that. Is Joseph Kelly still going to be tried next month, or has the charge been dropped? The whole Captain Tom thing was so disgusting I thought “great, glad I don’t have to listen to half of the news today”. There is a lot that is militaristic about the whole way the NHS is being promoted. Doorstep clappers might as well stand and salute – maybe with a more “physical” wing that burns out some “ethnic minority healthworkers” at the end of the street who are refusing to get vaccinated, seen as wicked evil party poopers who aren’t with the programme, as if anybody would dare disrespect Captainnn Tommm by being disobedienttt.
Daily Mail readers may love the “individualism” of reading about the interest rates on their savings accounts, but deep down they’re collectivists when it comes to the strong state in its monarcho-fascist form and cracking down on those who won’t stand up for the national anthem. The Captain Tom show was like the cult of the brainless soldier who always does what he’s told. It may be very relevant that within a relatively short period of time there may be a new monarch in Britain. The deranged crown prince has been called a “quasi-king” already (by journalists who make sure they distance themselves from saying it directly, because they’re too scared to), and there are indications that he may be behind some shifts in the selling of the British national spectacle to its home market – stuff like resacralising the land, and an emphasis on “the regions”.
What Joseph Kelly is alleged to have tweeted is not a sensible way to oppose the army. However, one day there may have to be a “let’s have 10 thousand co-publishers and see whether they want to jail us all” type of response.
One problem is the extreme centralisation of the internet, which practically nobody wants to address, because superficially it is the opposite of centralised.
My experience of the Daily Heil (the only paper where I’m not banned from commenting) is that there is a healthy interest in a decent health service and decent pensions. The economics of the petit bourgeoisie cease to be capitalist, individualist and nationalist/racist/crypto-fascist, when it comes to seeing a doctor and going to hospital or residential “care”.