craig

Freedom of Speech, and Higher Education

 in UK Policy by | View Comments

I went yesterday to the Stop the War demonstration at Trafalgar Square, largely because the police had given notice that they were banning it under the Vagrancy Act 1824. This was an appalling attack on free speech, and they were using that Act because Gordon Brown had promised the repeal of the hated SOCPA (Serious Organised Crime Prevention Act), which the government of which he was Chancellor had introduced. In a marvellous piece of Orwellian doublespeak, it sought to prevent “Serious organised crime” by curbing freedom of speech, including banning demonstrations within a mile of parliament.

Just in case people thought Brown’s promise to repeal these SOCPA provisions signalled an end to New Labour’s rollback of liberty, the police blew the dust off the Vagrancy Act (1824) instead.

I couldn’t miss the chance to be arrested for “vagrancy”, it sounded so deliciously Dickensian, and I think it would give me a rock solid case for putting “Occupation: vagrant” in my passport. But half an hour before the march started, the police backed down and unbanned it.

Nevertheless, they had a trick up their sleeve. They split the band of 3,000 demonstrators up into three parts, on College Green, Parliament Square and Whitehall, where they confined them to pens, with a wildly excessive number of policemen herding them like cattle. People were kept crushed in small fenced areas for up to two hours and not allowed to go to the loo. When people sat down (understandable in the circumstances) they were arrested.

What a depressing country.

Which brings me to the state of Higher Education. I was formally “Installed” as Rector of the University of Dundee on September 26. The University refused to publish my Rectorial Address, or give it out to the press, because they “do not agree with it”.

What are we coming to in this country, where even a University seeks to censor out contrary opinion? I do urge you to read the Address, because beyond the in-jokes I made some points I believe are extremely important.

ADDRESS GIVEN UPON THE OCCASION OF HIS INSTALLATION

AS RECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE

By

CRAIG J MURRAY Esq, MA(Hons)

In the

BONAR HALL, DUNDEE

26 September 2007

Under the Title of:

WHY LONDON SHOULD STOP WORRYING ABOUT SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE – WE CAN STILL RULE ENGLAND FROM BRUSSELS

Vice-Chancellor, My Dear Friends,

It is most kind of you to come along here today as I receive the singular honour of being made Rector of my own University.

I arrive here following our tradition of an idiosyncratic pub crawl known as the Rectorial Drag. That sounds like an occasion for which I should be picking out a nice skirt and blouse – which as some of my former student colleagues here will tell you would not be the first time. The Rectorial Drag however is an occasion where the students pull their new Rector through the streets in a carriage, from City Hall to University, entering the pubs on the way. I can honestly say it is the first time I have ever been dragged to a pub. Dragged out, yes. Chucked out, frequently. Dragged in is a new one.

By chance it is thirty years almost to the day since I arrived, bewildered, into freshers’ week, clutching everything I owned in one cardboard box and a battered BOAC flight bag.

Little did I dream that thirty years later I would become Rector of the place. Certainly not – I expected to be much too busy being Prime Minister.

In that distant first week I attended the Rectorial Installation of Sir Clement Freud. He was a man of great wit and perspicacity, and his installation address was hilarious. Sadly, as we all know, decline and decay is the natural order of things, and with the passing years Sir Clement declined to the extent that he eventually became Rector of St Andrews.

These occasions traditionally involve a certain amount of knockabout humour, and I am sure that no offence will be taken. We look in fact with fond regard to our sister institution south of the Tay Estuary, marking with sadness the scent of her senile decline, as we might an elderly relative whom we care about but are grateful we don’t have to live with.

I believe that Clement Freud was the only one of my predecessors to have made that particular error. Stephen Fry was invited to stand at St Andrews but sensibly declined. They can always try again when he’s 70.

All of which brings me to note what a tremendously talented bunch my predecessors as Rector have been. Here I give the obligatory tip of the hat to Sir Peter Ustinov.

I am biased in the case of two of them, George Mackie and Gordon Wilson, because I was the seconder of one and proposer of the other. That made my own election my third successful rectorial campaign, and I claim the record, to be beaten when I am re-elected in 2010.

Getting elected is of course the difficult bit. My own election was fiercely contested and the result was close. I would like to pay a sincere tribute to Andy Nicol, a real gentleman, for his well-fought and constructive campaign, and for being such a good loser. Though, of course, as a former captain of the British Lions rugby team he did have a great deal of practice.

One excellent piece of electioneering by my opponent was securing the entire front page of the election day Dundee edition of the Daily Record. Most of the page was taken up by a picture of Andy and the headline screamed “I was born to lead Dundee Students”. The Daily Record is a paper which is at least consistent in its standard of accuracy.

The flaw in this great ploy, achieved with considerable effort, was of course that not many of our electorate are Daily Record readers. Some folk surmised that this mistake came about because Scottish Labour HQ were under the impression the election was at the University of Abertay.

Anyway, it was a good bit of electioneering, and made even better by the fact that in this special edition of the Daily Record, my two immediate predecessors, not without some encouragement from within the University hierarchy, chose to endorse the candidature of my opponent.

The Record told us “Outgoing Rector Lorraine Kelly and comedian Fred Macaulay threw their weight behind Nicol as the former Scotland captain urged the University’s Record readers to vote for him in the polls today.”

I believe the University’s Record readers both did.

I don’t regard former Rectors campaigning for a candidate – and thus perforce campaigning against a candidate – as quite the done thing. But it is still potentially effective electioneering. The only downside I see is that, should the ploy fail and someone else get elected, and were that person in the least bit vindictive, that person would then have a great platform in front of the entire University to get his own back. I do see that potential danger, don’t you?

Some of you will be relieved, and some disappointed, to hear that I do not intend to do this. I am very glad that my predecessor, Lorraine Kelly, was Rector of this University. Otherwise she might have gone her entire life without ever seeing the inside of an institute of higher education.

The other ex-Rector involved was Fred Macaulay, apparently a local comedian, though that is not obvious from reading his rectorial address. In the most striking passage, Fred tells us he does a great impression of Sean Connery, adding “Hey, I’m bald and Scottish, how hard can it be?”

Very hard, Fred, very hard. Sean Connery is bald, Scottish and immensely talented. Fred, however, is more like this egg: bald, Scottish and easily crushed. (Breaks egg).

I did say we should have some knockabout stuff, and seriously Fred was a hard-working and popular Rector. I am sure he’ll come up with some much better jokes about me.

Now this is going to be a very dull afternoon if I just ramble on like this and you just gawp at me. We need some atmospherics – feel free to laugh and cheer, or clap or shout “Rubbish” when you want to. Above all do heckle. Heckling is a fine tradition. The very word comes from Dundee.

Heckling is a process in the jute industry. To heckle is to comb out the jute prior to spinning. It was a tough, manual job and the heckling shops were murky with dust that choked the lungs. The hecklers were famous for their radicalism, probably a reaction to their terrible working conditions, and would turn up and yell at politicians. I think that’s quite right – present company accepted I don’t recall ever meeting a politician who did not ought to be shouted at. Thus the hecklers yelled, and the verb “To heckle” jumped from a textile process to a political barracking. Uniquely, as far as I know, what other student unions call election hustings, DUSA called election hecklings.

One appalling development in modern politics is the death of heckling.

Nowadays politicians deliver their sound-bites to a pathetically complacent and complicit media, in front of a carefully selected and vetted audience of the faithful. Just try getting close enough to a politician to heckle them. I mean that literally – please do try. When someone does manage, like Walter Wolfgang, the eighty year old who shouted “Rubbish” at Jack Straw, they are likely to be manhandled and arrested under the laughably named Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Jack Straw, incidentally, is a man who should have “Rubbish” shouted at him from the moment he steps out of the shower in the morning until the moment he retires with his evening cocoa.

The peculiar criminalisation of heckling is part of the most extraordinary onslaught on our civil liberties. Here in Dundee a woman was arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act for walking on a cycle path. That is true – Google it. And last year we had the extraordinary incident of the Special Branch walking around Fresher’s Fayre. That is something which I promise you will not happen again. A university is no place for the thought police. We have no terrorists here; what our students are thinking is our students’ business. That is why they are here: to think.

Continues…

(more…)

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Back and Unbowed

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It is good to be blogging again. Many thanks to everyone for your tremendous support while I was down, and especially all those bloggers who protested against this censorship, achieved just by the layout of cash, with nothing being tested in court. I have still had no contact at any time from Usmanov or the shysters of Schillings.

We are back on craigmurray.org.uk. We hope that craigmurray.co.uk will be back too very soon. I have a plan for dealing with Usmanov and getting this matter into court, but am holding fire for a couple of days until we get the co.uk address back, where most people look for me. Meanwhile anyone remember this?

Alisher Usmanov, potential Arsenal* chairman, is a Vicious Thug,

Criminal, Racketeer, Heroin Trafficker and Accused Rapist

by Craig Murray

I thought I should make my views on Alisher Usmanov quite plain to you.

You are unlikely to see much plain talking on Usmanov elsewhere in the

media becuase he has already used his billions and his lawyers in a

pre-emptive strike. They have written to all major UK newspapers,

including the latter:

“Mr Usmanov was imprisoned for various offences under the old Soviet

regime. We wish to make it clear our client did not commit any of the

offences with which he was charged. He was fully pardoned after

President Mikhail Gorbachev took office. All references to these

matters have now been expunged from police records . . . Mr Usmanov

does not have any criminal record.”

Let me make it quite clear that Alisher Usmanov is a criminal. He was

in no sense a political prisoner, but a gangster and racketeer who

rightly did six years in jail. The lawyers cunningly evoke “Gorbachev”,

a name respected in the West, to make us think that justice prevailed.

That is completely untrue.

Usmanov’s pardon was nothing to do with Gorbachev. It was achieved

through the growing autonomy of another thug, President Karimov, at

first President of the Uzbek Soviet Socilist Republic and from 1991

President of Uzbekistan. Karimov ordered the “Pardon” because of his

alliance with Usmanov’s mentor, Uzbek mafia boss and major

international heroin overlord Gafur Rakimov. Far from being on

Gorbachev’s side, Karimov was one of the Politburo hardliners who had

Gorbachev arrested in the attempted coup that was thwarted by Yeltsin

standing on the tanks outside the White House.

Usmanov is just a criminal whose gangster connections with one of the

World’s most corrupt regimes got him out of jail. He then plunged into

the “privatisation” process at a time when gangster muscle was used to

secure physical control of assets, and the alliance between the Russian

Mafia and Russian security services was being formed.

Usmanov has two key alliances. he is very close indeed to President

Karimov, and especially to his daughter Gulnara. It was Usmanov who

engineered the 2005 diplomatic reversal in which the United States was

kicked out of its airbase in Uzbekistan and Gazprom took over the

country’s natural gas assets. Usmanov, as chairman of Gazprom

Investholdings paid a bribe of $88 million to Gulnara Karimova to

secure this. This is set out on page 366 of Murder in Samarkand.

Alisher Usmanov had risen to chair of Gazprom Investholdings because of

his close personal friendship with Putin, He had accessed Putin through

Putin’s long time secretary and now chef de cabinet, Piotr Jastrzebski.

Usmanov and Jastrzebski were roommates at college.

Gazprominvestholdings is the group that handles Gazproms interests

outside Russia, Usmanov’s role is, in effect, to handle Gazprom’s

bribery and sleaze on the international arena, and the use of gas

supply cuts as a threat to uncooperative satellite states.

Gazprom has also been the tool which Putin has used to attack internal

democracy and close down the independent media in Russia. Gazprom has

bought out – with the owners having no choice – the only independent

national TV station and numerous rgional TV stations, several radio

stations and two formerly independent national newspapers. These have

been changed into slavish adulation of Putin. Usmanov helped accomplish

this through Gazprom. The major financial newspaper, Kommersant, he

bought personally. He immediately replaced the editor-in-chief with a

pro-Putin hack, and three months later the long-serving campaigning

defence correspondent, Ivan Safronov, mysteriously fell to his death

from a window.

All this, both on Gazprom and the journalist’s death, is set out in

great detail here:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/06/russian_journal.html

Usmanov is also dogged by the widespread belief in Uzbekistan that he

was guilty of a particularly atrocious rape, which was covered up and

the victim and others in the know disappeared. The sad thing is that

this is not particularly remarkable. Rape by the powerful is an

everyday hazard in Uzbekistan, again as outlined in Murder in Samarkand

page 120. If anyone has more detail on the specific case involving

Usmanov please add a comment.

I reported back in 2002 or 2003 in an Ambassadorial top secret telegram

to the Foreign Office that Usmanov was the most likely favoured

successor of President Karimov as totalitarian leader of Uzbekistan. I

also outlined the Gazprom deal (before it happened) and the present by

Usmanov to Putin (though in Jastrzebski’s name) of half of Mapobank, a

Russian commercial bank owned by Usmanov. I will never forget the

priceless reply from our Embassy in Moscow. They said that they had

never even heard of Alisher Usmanov, and that Jastrzebski was a jolly

nice friend of the Ambassador who would never do anything crooked.

Sadly, I expect the football authorities will be as purblind. Football

now is about nothing but money, and even Arsenal supporters – as

tight-knit and homespun a football community as any – can be heard

saying they don’t care where the money comes from as long as they can

compete with Chelsea*.

I fear that is very wrong. Letting as diseased a figure as Alisher

Usmanov into your club can only do harm in the long term.

* I withdraw this – the majority of Arsenal fans turn out to have values that shame supporters at many other clubs.

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Mordechai Vanunu

 in War and Iran? by | View Comments

As the mad brinkmanship proceeds in the Middle East, it is worth bearing a few things in mind.

1) There is only one country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons, and it is a highly aggressive racist state that visits untold misery on its neighbours and illegally occupies their land. It is called Israel.

2) Making a nuclear weapon takes a lot of time and material. Both Syria and Iran are many years away, even if they are trying to produce a nuclear bomb – which they probably are. Given Israel’s nuclear bomb, and given what the US did to Iraq, I can quite understand their desire to go nuclear for protection. Bombing them just makes this worse.

3) A nuclear free Middle East, including Israel, and a withdrawal of all US military forces from Iraq, is the path to peace and agreement. Everything else is a build up to a big war – which is what some people want, of course.

4) Bombing someone else’s country is plain illegal outside of formal war. Even then, there are limits on what is legitimate.

5) My fellow University Rector, Glasgow’s Mordechai Vanunu, is still effectively imprisoned for telling us about Israel’s nuclear weapons programme. He should be released immediately.

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A Sovereign Iraq?

 in War in Iraq by | View Comments

Whether the “Government” of Iraq has any authority in its own country will be tested by the ability to make their banning of Blackwater stick. Most governments might be expected to object to having scores of thousands of foreign mercenaries roaming around their land, threatening the populace and occasionally massacring them.

Over 80% of the money spent by the US on “reconstruction” in Iraq has gone under the heading of “security”, mostly to companies like Blackwater and Aegis, their UK counterpart. The US is now trying to put on pressure by suspending all aid projects until Blackwater is reinstated. As their efforts this last four years have undeniably left Iraqis much worse off than before, they should be told where to get off.

If anyone doesn’t understand how these mercenary companies operate, they should view the infamous “Aegis Trophy Video”, originally put up on Aegis website by their employees as a macabre souvenir. In fact everyone should watch this – and remember this is not a movie, those are real human beings murdered for fun.

http://www.flurl.com/uploaded/Bareknucklepoliticscom_EXCLUSIVE_10122.html

The comment by the ex mercenary under the video is also worth taking in.

I feel terribly sorry for the soldiers who have ended up in this futile war. But for mercenaries I have no time at all. They kill people for money. If they are killed themselves, my sympathy is still there, but strained. One story which went peculiarly quiet was the five mercenaries, four British, from “Garda World” who were kidnapped at end May along with the consultant they were protecting. The kidnap involved over a hundred properly accredited Iraqi security personnel with the right uniforms, documents and weapons. What happened to the mercenaries, and to their client? Why did the whole story get a miniscule percentage of the publicity given routinely to Brit hostages?

The Garda World mercenaries had a peculiar relationship with the MI6 informant and neo-con alcoholic, the Rev Canon Andrew White, quite the strangest creature to come out of the generally admirable Church of England for many years. He left Baghdad shortly after this kidnap. Any connection?

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The Choice

 in Interviews by | View Comments

A half hour interview here as part of Michael Buerk’s very interesting Radio 4 series.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/mainframe.shtml?http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/thechoice

Meantime Murder in Samarkand appears almost totally off the shelves. I needed some copies at the weekend, and went to Waterstones in Malet St, Trafalgar Sq, Piccadilly Circus and Notting Hill Gate, to Daunts, Hatchards, Foyles, to Blackwells and Borders in Charing Cross Road and to Books Etc in Shepherds Bush. Between all of these I culled just four copies, with most shops having none. None have any copies today.

Amazon.co.uk also have the paperback no longer in stock but on 6 day delivery.

Yet there were plenty of copies everywhere of Tamerlaine’s Children by Robert Rand and Ghost Plane by Stephen Grey. These are very good books by friends of mine on broadly the same subject as mine, but have sold less than a quarter the number and are tens of thousands lower in the Amazon sales rankings.

I have continually been frustrated by this. Murder has sold remarkably well given its invisibility. But it really is hard to understand what is happening – and why.

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Murder In Samarkand “Celebrated” – Official!

 in The Film by | View Comments

Wow! Murder in Samarkand has graduated to be a “celebrated memoir”, according to the Guardian. Well, I certainly celebrated it, anyway.

In This World also gave Winterbottom a cause. He’s returned to it twice since then – with Road to Guant’namo and A Mighty Heart – and is planning a fourth: an adaptation of former diplomat Craig Murray’s celebrated memoir, Murder in Samarkand. But Winterbottom denies he has any special affinity for reactive, issue-based film-making. “Generally speaking, things we’ve done have been things we just thought were good ideas. We go through phases, obviously. Not all good. When we were doing Mighty Heart, we were driving through Pakistan and it felt kind of similar to In This World. This is when you have moments thinking: we’ve done this before so why are we doing this? What’s the point of doing this again?”

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2168097,00.html

It is in fact a fascinating interview, well worth reading quite aside from my brief mention.

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Yet More Schillings Bollocks

 in Uzbekistan by | View Comments

On my article about Alisher Usmanov which so incensed his lawyers Schillings, let me ask this question. Has anybody seen an argument posted or published from any credible source to argue that what I say about Usmanov is untrue?

I ask the question because one of the edits to this log my webhost made at Schillings’ behest was to say that my claim was “regarded as false by many people”. I have altered that edit, because there is no justification for such a claim. I have yet to see evidence of anybody, not one solitary person, arguing that I am wrong about Usmanov, other than his lawyers. Who are these “Many people”, and why are they peculiarly silent?

I am very sympathetic to my webhost having to change things for Schillings, but not to the extent of altering things to become defamatory of me!!!

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Thank You, Gordon

 in Scotland by | View Comments

BrownThatcher.jpg

Is Gordon Brown a secret supporter of Scottish independence, or just crassly concentrated on getting votes in South Eastern England? Recently he has been at pains to promote the idea that he, not David Cameron, is the true heir to Maggie Thatcher. He has been assiduously putting Tories into key jobs. And now this wonderful picture.

Thank you very, very much Gordon. You are doing infinitely more to advance the cause of Scottish independence than 500 of me ever could.

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Censorship

 in Uzbekistan by | View Comments

Just to make plain that I have great webhosts who have been extremely supportive in all kinds of circumstances, 24 hours a day. They have wider responsibilities and I have no problem with their taking down or amending my stuff when they get their umpteenth bullying letter from ultra well paid bluffers and extortionists Schillings.

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More Appalling Guardian Journalism

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The worst bit of journalism yet on the Usmanov case comes, unsurprisingly, from the Guardian. For arse-licking, unquestioning repetition of the claims of Usmanov’s lawyers, this takes the biscuit.

Usmanov aims legal arsenal at bloggers

Paul Kelso

Thursday September 13, 2007

The Guardian

Arsenal’s newest shareholder, the Uzbek minerals billionaire Alisher Usmanov, continues to police discussion of his past and of his intentions for the Gunners after paying ’75m for David Dein’s 14.58% share in the club.

Schillings, the lawyers acting for Usmanov, have been in touch with several independent Arsenal supporters’ websites and blogs warning them to remove postings referring to allegations made against him by Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan.

Usmanov was jailed under the old Soviet regime but says that he was a political prisoner who was then freed and granted a full pardon once Mikhail Gorbachev came to power as president. Schillings have warned the websites that repetition of Murray’s allegations were regarded as “false, indefensible and grossly defamatory”.

Most sites have complied and removed the allegations. Murray himself is yet to receive any correspondence from Usmanov’s lawyers, though the hosts of his website have complied with Schillings’ demands. The former ambassador says that he has contacted Schillings to ensure they know where to send any writ.

Usmanov’s Arsenal investment vehicle, Red & White, has purchased further shares in the club since taking a major stake but as yet has not arranged a meeting with the club. Existing board members have become remarkably vocal since his purchase, barely a day passing without a senior figure from the club talking up Arsenal’s financial position. The club’s results, due next week, are expected to show a healthy position, with as much as ‘3m generated by each match at the Emirates.

The bit about

Schillings have warned the websites that repetition of Murray’s allegations were regarded as “false, indefensible and grossly defamatory”.

is particularly egregious. It makes it sound as though there has been some kind of judgement in the case. In fact the facts as I stated them are regarded as false by nobody to my knowlege except Schillings; other people may regard then as fals, but I am to date unaware of a single person saying so. And Schillings of course are paid to regard them as false. Has anybody else seen anything from a respectable source arguing that what I said about Usmanov was false?

Paul Kelso contacted me before writing his article, and here is the email I sent him:

Hi Paul;

no – Schillings have had no contact with me, except I phoned them to make sure they could find me for a writ! My webhost received a legal threat from Schillings, and my webhost responded to the threat of legal action by taking down one of my articles. I withdraw nothing. I want Usmanov to sue me. He is a <removed on legal recommendation>, and I know enough about him, and enough

potential witnesses, to give him a torrid time in a UK court beyond even the ability of Schillings to cover up.

Usmanov knows that, and Schillings are obviously bluffing – although they are writing that my book is “libellous”, it has been out for over a year now, sold over 25,000 copies already, and they have done nothing but spout bollocks.

As you may know, my book is being made into a film next year by Michael Winterbottom and Paramount. Don’t know who will play Usmanov – sadly Fatty Arbuckle is dead.

Craig

Now how fair and balanced was Kelso’s article?

– Legal note – 2 edits made by webhost on legal advice

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Gallus

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I had to do some serious journalism tonight, but took a break to watch the France-Scotland game. Now I am going to have to wait until tomorrow when I sober up. Tomorrow may not be long enough.

21 points from 9 games, including beating France home and away, is an astonishing result for a Scotland team widely regarded as largely talent-free, and drawn in an apparently impossible group including France, Italy and Ukraine. Only seven teams have ever won the World Cup, and to face two of them in a European Championship qualifying group is ridiculous.

I grew up in an era of Scotland teams gloriously endowed with talent. In 1974 Scotland went to the World Cup with the best team in the world. I googled to try and find a squad list, but I couldn’t discover one. Amazingly the Wikipedia entry for Scotland’s football team doesn’t give 1974 a mention.

So I have to try and remember the squad, the backbone of which – David Harvey, Billy Bremner, Peter Lorimer, Joe Jordan – came from Don Revie’s Leeds United team. Scotland were so outrageously talented that Jimmy Johnstone didn’t get off the bench, and another truly great winger, Eddie Grey, wasn’t even taken. Any team that can put Kenny Dalglish and Denis Law up front was something to marvel at. For me the team was best exemplified by the full-backs, Sandy Jardine and Danny MacGrain, the two most talented players in that position I have ever seen paired for any team anywhere, who helped invent the modern wing-back concept. And what a majestic player Davie Hay was.

That Scotland became the first team in the history of the World Cup to be undefeated yet not win it. They outplayed Brazil in a 0-0 draw. I have looked down the barrels of guns more than once (and I mean that literally, not as sportng hyperbole), but the longest half second of my life was when the ball bobbled agonisingly just past the post, after Billy Bremner stabbed at it with his left foot when a corner, from Willie Morgan I think, whipped through the crowded six yard box (Jordan and Holton were a crowd in themselves) and suddenly flashed in upon him. I remember his forearms around his ears in agony when he realised what he had done. And I recall the hopeless long shot, bobbling gently, that the Zaire goalkeeper let through his legs to knock Scotland out on goal difference.

Tactical naivety was part of the problem. Why on earth didn’t we unleash Willie Morgan and Jimmy Johnstone to run at Zaire? Over-confidence, perhaps. Lorimer was a wonderful player, but we developed an over-reliance on his pile-driving free kicks.

Scotland now have probably not a single player, other than Craig Gordon, who would have even been considered for the 1974 squad. The outrageous talent has peculiarly dried up, despite McFadden’s glorious strike. But we have a very tough-minded management, a team spirit untroubled by preening superstars, and that gallus quality which works better in an underdog than when we were fancied.

Excuse me, I have to pour another whisky…

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German Bomb Plot: Islamic Jihad Union

 in Uzbekistan by | View Comments

Here I explained that the Islamic Jihad Union was first heard of in the context of bombings in Uzbekistan which were not in fact bombings, as I can testify from direct personal observation conducted officially for the British government. I believe the “Islamic Jihad Union”, like the “bombings”, was concocted by the Uzbek security services.

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/09/the_mysterious.html#comments

We now hear from the German authorities that the IJU has claimed responsibility on the web for the alleged bomb plot there. Peculiarly, extensive research by the BBC in Uzbek, Russian, English and Arabic has failed to identify this claim, or any Islamic Jihad Union website. What would it prove anyway? I could get up a posting somewhere claiming to be Santa Claus and taking responsibility,

Let me repeat again:

I never met anybody in Uzbekistan, including from Islamist groups, who had heard of the IJU. I researched this intensively. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, of whom the group is allegedly a cooperative offshoot, have never referred to it anywhere. Nobody in Islamist circles in the UK, or Uzbek exile circles worldwide, has ever heard of the IJU. Nobody can name a single member, let alone leader.

The secuirty services intercept an astonishing number of electronic communications between extremists and suspected terrorists. There has never been a reference to the IJU in any intercepted conversation.

I do not say that the IJU does not exist. It may do. It may be a real terrorist organisation. It may be an agent provocateur operation. It may be a simple invention by the Uzbek security services. But it was first heard of in the context of “bombings” which were not what the Uzbek government said they were, on which JTAC accepted my reporting as correct. The IJU has been seized upon by the US and Germany successively as justification for their alliance with the appalling and totalitarian Uzbek regime, possibly the most vicious in the world.

I shall be following the case in Germany very carefully indeed. I am going to attempt to get my official reports of my investigations of the alleged IJU “Bombings” in Tashkent, and the JTAC responses, released to the German courts.

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Usmanov Bluster

 in Uzbekistan by | View Comments

Usmanov’s lawyers are now blustering that the coverage of Usmanov in Murder in Samarkand is libellous.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2414738.ece

Given that he has such hyperactive lawyers, is it not strange that the book has been out for over a year, but they have made no move to sue for libel? Their bluff and bluster really is quite pathetic, and I am getting bored with it.

Sadly, it still continues to work on British newspaper editors. I find it astonishing that even the Sunday Times can report so deadpan Usmanov’s ludicrous claim that he was not jailed as a criminal but as a “political prisoner”.

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Who Ate All The Pies?

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From the Evening Standard, an article about Alisher Usmanov and me that is almost entirely wrong.

Arsenal billionaire in Red and White rumpus

07.09.07

A legal row has blown up between billionaire Alisher Usmanov, the man who has bought a ’75million stake in Arsenal, and the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan.

Craig Murray, who became a fierce critic of the Uzbek government after being the ambassador to the country from 2002 to 2004, was yesterday forced to remove a series of critical comments about Usmanov from his personal website.

The former diplomat penned a piece about Usmanov after his company Red and White bought ex-Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein’s 14.58% stake in the club last week.

Usmanov was born in Uzbekistan before moving to Russia and Murray made a number of allegations about the tycoon’s links with the Uzbek regime.

Usmanov has instructed solicitors to take action against media outlets making any damaging claims about the businessman and they threatened to sue Murray unless the article was removed.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/sport/article-23411391-details/Arsenal+billionaire+in+Red+and+White+rumpus/article.do

In fact, I have received no communication of any kind from Usmanov or his solicitors. the opposite is true; I telephoned Schillings and asked them to sue me, but they didn’t seem keen.

I know lawyers who would be delighted to have the chance to quiz Usmanov in the witness stand (if we can find one wide enough), about his criminal conviction in the Soviet Union, how he secured his pardon, his relationship with President Islam Karimov, Gulnara Karimova and Gafur Rakhimov, the sources of his wealth and the doings of Gazprom Investholdings. I should be interested in his views on the mysterious fall from a window of his employee Igor Safronov.

I know several people who would like to take the witness stand themselves.

To many people it might seem strange that somebody should need to get expensive libel lawyers to write to all newspapers, before anyone had published anything, threatening to take them to court if they did. Some people might conclude that indicates something to hide.

My earlier post was removed by my web server after the webhost was threatened with legal action. I have heard nothing – a cowardly way of proceeding, in my view. I support the webhost’s decision to remove the article rather than have the site, and other valuable sites, perhaps closed down. But once the truth has escaped onto the internet, it is out there, despite all their frantic efforts.

Everyone, whatever their crimes, deserves legal representation in the criminal law. But lawyers who, for money, work on suppressing the truth for people like Usmanov, are themselves slugs.

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US Diplomats and Human Rights

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The house magazine for US diplomats, Foreign Service, has published its September 2007 issue on “Human Rights Promotion in the Post-9/11 Era”. It contains a number of excellent essays, and also one by me on the lessons of my time in Uzbekistan, which I reproduce here:

The Folly of a Short-Term Approach

By Craig Murray

Ambassador Craig Murray resigned from the British Diplomatic Service in February 2005. He is now rector of the University of Dundee and an honorary research fellow at the University of Lancaster School of Law. His memoir of his time in Uzbekistan, Murder in Samarkand, is available from Amazon.co.uk. Paramount and Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B are producing a movie based on that memoir, with filming scheduled to begin in February 2008 under British director Michael Winterbottom.

I am very pleased to be offered the chance to pass on to you some thoughts on the conflict between human rights and the ‘War on Terror,’ drawn largely from my recent service as the United Kingdom’s ambassador to Uzbekistan. As a result of that experience, I should acknowledge, I was recently vetoed as a participant in a U.S.-sponsored seminar on that topic by a very senior State Department official, on the grounds that I was ‘viciously anti-American.’

That is not true, of course. Yes, I am a person who holds his beliefs very dear and who believes strongly in individual liberty in all spheres. Thus, I am a passionate supporter not just of democracy and human rights, but also of capitalism and free markets.

So how could someone with that belief set come to be perceived as anti-American? The answer is that I do not believe that recent U.S. foreign policy has promoted those goals at all, but rather has been doing something very different.

Walter Carrington Avenue

To illustrate what I mean, let me offer an example of diplomacy at its best. One of my inspirations was Walter Carrington, the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria from 1993 to 1997. Amb. Carrington never accepted the brutal dictatorship of the Sani Abacha regime (1993-1998), and constantly went beyond normal diplomatic behavior in assisting and encouraging human rights groups, and in making outspoken speeches on human rights and democracy.

Carrington’s approach was a direct challenge to the British Embassy in Nigeria, which pursued a much more traditional line of polite interaction with the president and his cohorts. This appeasement did us no good, as Abacha repeatedly moved against our interests; for example, he banned British Airways from flying into Nigeria. Nonetheless, my diplomatic colleagues looked down their long noses at Carrington with disdain, for raising unpleasant subjects like torture and execution at cocktail parties. (I regret to say that some of the career subordinates in the U.S. embassy did the same.)

The Abacha dictatorship hated Carrington so much that the Nigerian armed forces even stormed the ambassador’s farewell reception and arrested some Nigerian participants, a breach which was rightly condemned by the U.S. Congress. But a grateful Nigerian people did not forget his efforts on their behalf, and soon after Abacha’s downfall, the street on which the U.S. and British consulates in Lagos were situated was renamed by the local authorities as Walter Carrington Avenue. I believe it is still called that.

Carrington’s example taught me a great lesson in diplomacy: that the relationship of an embassy should be with the people of a country, not just with their authorities. Regimes which are hated by their people will never survive indefinitely, though they may endure a very long time. A fundamental role of an embassy in these situations should be to do everything in its power to hasten the dawn of freedom.

A Perfect Failure

Uzbekistan is undoubtedly one of the most vicious dictatorships on Earth. Freedom House ranks it as one of just five countries scoring a perfect 7 ‘ complete lack of freedom ‘ on both political rights and civil liberties. The Heritage Foundation’s view of economic freedoms there is similarly critical. In short, Uzbekistan does not follow the Southeast Asian model of an authoritarian government overseeing a free economy and rapid economic development. It is more akin to North Korea than to Singapore. Soviet institutions have been strengthened and corruption even increased. Only the iconography switched, from communism to nationalism.

Yet Uzbekistan was embraced as a Western ally following the 9/11 attacks, a member of the ‘Coalition of the Willing.’ In 2002 alone the U.S. taxpayer gave the Uzbek regime over $500 million, of which $120 million went to the armed forces, and $82 million direct to arguably the world’s most vicious security services. Also during that year, according to impeccable British government pathology evidence, at least one Uzbek dissident was boiled alive. The U.S. taxpayer paid to heat the water.

(more…)

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The Mysterious Islamic Jihad Union

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The three alleged “terrorists” arrested in Germany, aimed to blow up US military airports, civil airports, bars, discos and other targets, according to the German authorities, motivated by a fanatical hatred of the United States.

They have been identified as coming from the “Islamic Jihad Union”, an alleged offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. This organisation was first heard of in intelligence passed by the Uzbek intelligence services to the United States during alleged “Terror attacks” in Tashkent in spring 2004. Those attacks were in fact largely fake and almost certainly the work of the Uzbek security services, from my investigations on the spot at the time. These are detailed in pages 325 to 339 of Murder in Samarkand. These “attacks” were followed by the arrest of many hundred people in Tashkent, largely those with a little money and a Western lifestyle. From the torture chambers, hundreds confessed to membership of the Islamic Jihad Union. The United States, still an ally of Uzbekistan at that time, was keen to accept the narrative and moved succesfully to place the Islamic Jihad Union on the United Nations list of terrorist organisations.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1595387,00.html

In fact there was no evidence of the existence of this organisation other than that given by the Uzbek Security Services. There are, for example, no communications intercepts between senior terrorists referring to themselves as the Islamic Jihad Union.

Germany houses the biggest concentration of exiled Uzbek dissidents in the West, and in May of 2004 the Uzbek security services were already passing on alleged intelligence about attacks by the Islamic Jihad Union on US targets in Germany. Peculiarly, newspaper stories about these IJU plots in Germany have been surfacing regularly for the last two years, ahead of the recent arrests.

Germany is of course now Uzbekistan’s major ally in the West. Germany has an airbase in Uzbekistan and still has very close security service coopertation with Uzbekistan. Germany has been pushing hard within the EU for the lifting of sanctions imposed on Uzbekistan following the massacre bu the Uzbek armed forces of at least 700 demonstrators at Andijan in May 2005. Germany’s close relationship with Uzbekistan is based on the interests of Gazprom and its $8 billion Nordstream Russian/German joint venture for a Baltic pipeline to bring Russian and Uzbek gas to Germany. This was orchestrated by Gerhard Schroeder, now Chairman of Nordstream, and Alisher Usmanov, chairman of Gazprom Investholdings.

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/05/uzbekistan_and.html

Germany therefore remains very open to the Uzbek security service agenda. It is in the light of these interests that the story being given about the latest arrests should be considered. There are some peculiar points about it: why are the German authorities connecting a Turk and two ethnic Germans, who allegedly trained in Pakistan, to an obscure and possibly non-existent Uzbek group?

I should make plain that regrettably it is a fact that there are those who commit violence, motivated by a fanatic version of their faith. Sadly the appalling aggression of US and allied war policy has made such reaction much more frequent. These men may or may not have been planning to commit explosions. But if they were, the question is who was really pulling their strings, and why?

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The Women at the Tomb

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nadiratomb.jpg

Nadira playing Magdalene in The Women at the Tomb

Nadira is playing at the moment in a fringe production of The Women at the Tomb by Michael De Ghelderode, at the Lion and Unicorn theatre (above the pub) at 42 Gaisford St, Kentish Town, NW5. The play runs till 16 September if you want to go along and see it.

Details here:

http://www.actprovocateur.net/home.html

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Murder in Tashkent

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I am much shaken by the assassination of yet another of my Uzbek friends, the brave, talented and internationally renowned theatre director, Mark Weil.

Mark created and led an independent theatre company, the Ilkhom Theatre of Tashkent. They were the very first independent theatre company in the whole Soviet Union. Their artistic freedom, performance of previously banned works and tackling of social issues made them one of the sensations of the late Soviet Union, enabled by Glasnost. They became the toast of Moscow intellectual circles in the late 1980’s.

As Mark described it to me, they then had the irony of being part of the destruction of the Soviet Union, only to be plunged into the even greater gloom and tyranny of Uzbekistan. But by then Mark, a native Uzbek of German stock, had built up the formidable international reputation that enabled Ilkhom to continue to flourish as a tiny, bright and incredibly unlikely beacon of light in Tashkent. They played to great acclaim on every continent, their last appearance in the UK being a sell out run at the Barbican last year. I had a long talk with Mark and his family afterwards and found him less optimistic, his cares heavier, than ever before. He was, however, determined to stay in Tashkent and battle it out.

Mark’s style was always in public to deny breezily that he faced any particular problems, and to try to shelter everyone else – his company, his family, his loyal audiences – from them. He would avoid direct criticism of the regime, but allow his art to talk for him, still using his theatre to tackle challenging questions of Uzbek society – unemployment, drug addiction, freedom, homosexuality, religion – which are absolutely forbidden from discussion, both in Uzbekistan’s 100% state controlled media, and in public. Typical of his style was his TV documentary on Tashkent’s monumental architecture. Showing the change of monster iconography in bronze from Tsarist generals, through Lenin, Stalin and Marx to Karimov’s use of the Tamerlaine cult, on the surface it was a paean to state progress, but the message that “Karimov too will pass” could not have been more clear. Mark was a great subverter.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ft20070222a1.html

He was currently engaged in one of those collaborations with Western theatre companies which so worried the authorities, in this case a British company. He was also preparing for the opening tonight of Ilkhom’s new season. Arriving back at his apartment block after final rehearsal last night, he was murdered by a group of men in T-shirts. Reports are confused as to stabbed or shot.

The method of killing is precisely that used in every one of the murderous assaults on Russian journalists I investigated earlier this year. In each case, they were ambushed on return home from work – the standard method of the security services. Mark had told his British collaborators he was under great pressure.

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/06/russian_journal.html

What happens now is very predictable. Karimov will blame “Islamic militants” and there will be further arrests, and probably convictions, of dissidents in Tashkent as usual. With Mark a great talent dies, and one of the last flickering embers of freedom in Uzbekistan.

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Arsenal

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I have been delighted by the reaction of Arsenal fans – the large majority seem not to want Usmanov’s money, and juging by yesterday’s performance they don’t need it.

I am most happy to give evidence to the Premier League if anyone can point me in the right direction. But I rather hope Usmanov’s hyperactive and expensive lawyers will sue me for libel. Questioning Usmanov in a British court would bring a much fairer result than anything I expect from our tainted football authorities.

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Alisher Usmanov, potential Arsenal chairman, is a Vicious Thug, Criminal, Racketeer, Heroin Trafficker and Accused Rapist

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I thought I should make my views on Alisher Usmanov quite plain to you. You are unlikely to see much plain talking on Usmanov elsewhere in the media becuase he has already used his billions and his lawyers in a pre-emptive strike. They have written to all major UK newspapers, including the latter:

Mr Usmanov was imprisoned for various offences under the old Soviet regime. We wish to make it clear our client did not commit any of the offences with which he was charged. He was fully pardoned after President Mikhail Gorbachev took office. All references to these matters have now been expunged from police records . . . Mr Usmanov does not have any criminal record.

Let me make it quite clear that Alisher Usmanov is a criminal. He was in no sense a political prisoner, but a gangster and racketeer who rightly did six years in jail. The lawyers cunningly evoke “Gorbachev”, a name respected in the West, to make us think that justice prevailed. That is completely untrue.

Usmanov’s pardon was nothing to do with Gorbachev. It was achieved through the growing autonomy of another thug, President Karimov, at first President of the Uzbek Soviet Socilist Republic and from 1991 President of Uzbekistan. Karimov ordered the “Pardon” because of his alliance with Usmanov’s mentor, Uzbek mafia boss and major international heroin overlord Gafur Rakimov. Far from being on Gorbachev’s side, Karimov was one of the Politburo hardliners who had Gorbachev arrested in the attempted coup that was thwarted by Yeltsin standing on the tanks outside the White House.

Usmanov is just a criminal whose gangster connections with one of the World’s most corrupt regimes got him out of jail. He then plunged into the “privatisation” process at a time when gangster muscle was used to secure physical control of assets, and the alliance between the Russian Mafia and Russian security services was being formed.

Usmanov has two key alliances. he is very close indeed to President Karimov, and especially to his daughter Gulnara. It was Usmanov who engineered the 2005 diplomatic reversal in which the United States was kicked out of its airbase in Uzbekistan and Gazprom took over the country’s natural gas assets. Usmanov, as chairman of Gazprom Investholdings paid a bribe of $88 million to Gulnara Karimova to secure this. This is set out on page 366 of Murder in Samarkand.

Alisher Usmanov had risen to chair of Gazprom Investholdings because of his close personal friendship with Putin, He had accessed Putin through Putin’s long time secretary and now chef de cabinet, Piotr Jastrzebski. Usmanov and Jastrzebski were roommates at college. Gazprominvestholdings is the group that handles Gazproms interests outside Russia, Usmanov’s role is, in effect, to handle Gazprom’s bribery and sleaze on the international arena, and the use of gas supply cuts as a threat to uncooperative satellite states.

Gazprom has also been the tool which Putin has used to attack internal democracy and close down the independent media in Russia. Gazprom has bought out – with the owners having no choice – the only independent national TV station and numerous rgional TV stations, several radio stations and two formerly independent national newspapers. These have been changed into slavish adulation of Putin. Usmanov helped accomplish this through Gazprom. The major financial newspaper, Kommersant, he bought personally. He immediately replaced the editor-in-chief with a pro-Putin hack, and three months later the long-serving campaigning defence correspondent, Ivan Safronov, mysteriously fell to his death from a window.

All this, both on Gazprom and the journalist’s death, is set out in great detail here:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2007/06/russian_journal.html

Usmanov is also dogged by the widespread belief in Uzbekistan that he was guilty of a particularly atrocious rape, which was covered up and the victim and others in the know disappeared. The sad thing is that this is not particularly remarkable. Rape by the powerful is an everyday hazard in Uzbekistan, again as outlined in Murder in Samarkand page 120. If anyone has more detail on the specific case involving Usmanov please add a comment.

I reported back in 2002 or 2003 in an Ambassadorial top secret telegram to the Foreign Office that Usmanov was the most likely favoured successor of President Karimov as totalitarian leader of Uzbekistan. I also outlined the Gazprom deal (before it happened) and the present by Usmanov to Putin (though in Jastrzebski’s name) of half of Mapobank, a Russian commercial bank owned by Usmanov. I will never forget the priceless reply from our Embassy in Moscow. They said that they had never even heard of Alisher Usmanov, and that Jastrzebski was a jolly nice friend of the Ambassador who would never do anything crooked.

Sadly, I expect the football authorities will be as purblind. Football now is about nothing but money, and even Arsenal supporters – as tight-knit and homespun a football community as any – can be heard saying they don’t care where the money comes from as long as they can compete with Chelsea.

I fear that is very wrong. Letting as diseased a figure as Alisher Usmanov into your club can only do harm in the long term.

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