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Schillings are a firm of libel lawyers dedicated to prevent the truth from being known about some deeply unlovely people. They managed temporarily to close down this blog (and several others) to keep information quiet about the criminal record of Alisher Usmanov. Now they are attempting to block the publication of my new book in the interests of mercenary commander Tim Spicer, one of those who has made a fortune from the Iraq War. It is sad but perhaps predictable that private profits from the illegal Iraq war, in which hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died, are providing the funding to try to silence my book.

Libel law in the UK is a remarkable thing – Schillings can go for an injunction when I haven’t published anything about Spicer yet and they haven’t seen what I intend to publish. People might conclude that Spicer has something to hide. You will see that they also are attempting to censor not only the book, but what I say at the Edinburgh Book Festival on 12 August. I can assure you that they will find it impossible to affect what I say about Spicer at that event.

Nor will they prevent me from publishing the truth about Spicer, one way or another.

I am addressing the Cambridge Union on Monday 21 January, which should be fun.

http://www.cambridge-union.org/index.php?page=ZXZlbnQ=&eventid=334

I have just spoken to Jahongir who is expecting to be deported this evening, so we still have a few hours to try to stop this. An article 39 application to the European Court of Human Rights is being worked on, but not safe at this short notice. Meantime please contact your MP, any media contacts you have, anyone who might help. Both Tom Porteous of Human Rights Watch and myself worked the media yesterday, but to little apparent effect.

One of the many gross aspects of this case is that Jahongir’s case has been “fast tracked” and gone through hearing and appeal to deportation in just a fortnight. His solicitor had less than a week to prepare his appeal – and unfortunately I was in Africa all that week and could not appear as a witness. The judge dismissed requests for a postponement on the grounds she could see no valid reason why witnesses could not get to court. She also dismissed a letter from Uzbek opposition leader Mohammed Salih as not genuine – even though I know for sure it was genuine. This case points up the farce of our asylum system and the cruelty of the “Fast Track” process.

These are Jahongir’s Home Office references:

Home Office ref. ?” S2185191

Port ref. ?” BGT/188094

DMS ref. ?” 67823

Jahongir is currently in Harmondsworth Detention Centre.

Jahongir’s deportation is, beyond any possible dispute, illegal under international law. The UK is a State Party to the UN Convention Against Torture, which states at Article 3:

Article 3

1. No State Party shall expel, return (“refouler”) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.

it is quite impossible to argue, by the standard given, that it is admissible to return Jahongir to Uzbekistan. As a nation we appear to have abandoned all pretence at legality.

http://www.ohchr.org/english/law/cat.htm

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.

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

Where, exactly, might he have been concealing a bomb and have been in imminent danger of detonating it? Remember both 7 July and 21 July bombs were bulky productions contained in large backpacks.

An excellent article by Felicity Arbuthnot:

Arms from the US., have been flowing in to Israel, with Britain’s backing, to kill Palestinians at crossings, children going to school, families picnicking on beaches. Heavy machinery has demolished family homes, trashed municipal offices, villages, so foreign settlers or multinational businesses can ‘legally’ steal and build on ancient land, the heritage of families, handed down over generations; machinery which destroys their farms, citrus and olive groves. Where has been ‘peace envoy’ Blair’s unequivocal condemnation? Where has been even a bleat of protest? Did he read recent reports of a village where Bedouin have lived for sixty years, where Israeli forces were in such a hurry to demolish for more settlers, they allegedly even dragged babies out of homes, still in their play pens?

‘ “A true friend of the State of Israel,” said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of his outgoing British counterpart Tony Blair “Tony Blair is a very well-appreciated figure in Israel,” said Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. According to an Israeli government statement, Israel “will provide [him] with all necessary assistance in order for him to carry out his duties.” , writes Arjan El Fassad (Electronic Intifada) You bet. Moreover: ‘In his speech at the Annual Reception of Labour Friends of Israel in September 2006, Blair said: “I have never actually found it hard to be a friend of Israel, I am proud to be a friend of Israel.” ‘ No doubt his role to ‘advise’ on ‘institutional reform’ in Palestine will provide him with a front row seat at the sort of ‘reform’ he has been party to in his invasions – destruction of life, limb and that left of Palestine’s civil society.

He should be quite at home in another invading, occupying country, which has also divided Palestine as he and Bush planned to divide Iraq – and where, like Iraq, communities are walled off from each other by the policies of ‘democracy’. The Messianic Blair, having bought lock, stock and barrel in to the neo-cons ‘crusade’, ‘clash of civlisations’, has never openly backed off from some seriously disturbing bedfellows.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6286

For those of you who have read Murder in Samarkand, you might be interested in an update on what has happened to Nadira, now over a year since the ending of the book.

Well, we are still very happy together. Nadira completed a course at Rose Bruford College, then last year did both summer schools at RADA and this week finishes her postgraduate acting course at Drama Studio London. Next week ahe discovers if she has passed her BA at Trinity College, London. She has obtained her RADA Bronze Shakespeare Certificate, and takes her Silver in the summer. As many actors who are native English speakers have difficulty with these, I am terribly proud of her.

But now, of course, she faces the acid test for any young actor; whetherr she can make a living in the profession. She has already had a couple of small professional parts on TV, but the next few months will be crucial. At this stage you need luck as well as talent and hard work.

Stalin had a word for it: Kompromat. it is now being used against Angus MacNeil, the Scottish Nationalist MP who launched the “Cash for Honours” scandal that may well put some of Blair’s top aides in jail, probably for their destruction of evidence.

This account from the “This is London” website makes the parallel with the smear campaign against me. I would add that, after a four month investigation loaded against me in every possible way, I was found not guilty of all the allegations against me.

For American readers, the age of consent in the UK is 16, so MacNeil is not accused of anything illegal. MacNeil has come clean and said he was “Wrong and stupid” to romp with the girls. That is a question of personal morality. Having seen their photos, I think he is a lucky man with excellent taste.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23392190-details/Is%20’sleazebuster’%20MP%20who%20romped%20with%20two%20teen%20girls%20the%20victim%20of%20a%20’smear%20campaign’/article.do

The MP who triggered the police investigation into cash-for-peerages is the suspected victim of a sinister smear campaign, it has been claimed.

Scottish Nationalist MP Angus Macneil was forced to apologise to his wife and family after admitting to a ‘drunken romp’ with two teenage girls.

But in a dramatic twist, SNP party leader Alex Salmond suggested the MP had been spied on by MI5 as a result of the honours inquiry.

Mr Salmond said Mr Macneil had made the ‘most extraordinary powerful enemies’ after the inquiry probed the highest levels of Downing Street.

His complaint to the Metropolitan Police has triggered a 13-month probe which has seen Tony Blair interviewed twice by detectives and fundraiser Lord Levy and top No10 aide Ruth Turner arrested.

Two police forces confirmed they had investigated complaints of ‘intense intrusion’ against Mr Macneil but said no crimes had been detected.

The Metropolitan Police revealed it had investigated an allegation of a break-in to Mr Macneil’s Commons office after claims it had been ‘swept’ in a covert spying operation, but found no evidence.

Yet the alleged incidents bear striking similiarities to the treatment of former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who claimed he was the victim of dirty tricks by MI6 after speaking out against US foreign policy in the former Soviet state.

After he accused Britain of being complicit in the torture of terrorist suspects by American forces, stories emerged of Mr Murray’s affair with a 22-year-old dancer, which the diplomat admitted, and accusations that he offered visas in return for sex, which he denied.

A Sunday newspaper revealed that Mr Macneil ‘kissed and fondled’ two teenage girls in a hotel room in July 2005.

Let me start by saying that I am not querying the coordinates (29 degrees 50.36 minutes North 048 degrees 43.08 minutes East) for the Indian merchant vessel given by the UK MOD. In the British version the incident took place at that vessel. They said that the Indian vessel was anchored at these coordinates for two days.

By contrast the Iranian government has given four different coordinates, allegedly referring not to a single incident but to the course of the Royal Naval vessels.

My point has been all along that the precise coordinates are a red herring, because the maritime boundary has never been agreed. There is therefore no clear “line” you can be one side or the other of.

But I have been contacted now by three independent people – two claiming experience as mariners – to make the following point. To the best of my ability I have checked it out, but I am not a qualified navigator. I am not claiming that the following is correct – it is put forward as a problem, not a solution. I am appealing for assistance from those technically equipped to throw any light on this problem.

The MOD claimed that the Indian merchant vessel was anchored “in the channel”. But these coordinates are over a nautical mile further West (ie towards Iraq) than the channel. That bit I am quite certain of.

The mystery is this. On British nautical maps, 29 degrees 50.36 minutes North 048 degrees 43.08 minutes East is 100 yards above the low water line. That is to say it dries out at low tide. The vessel pictured by the MOD is a substantial merchant vessel. No captain of such a vessel would knowingly take his vessel to such a position, let alone anchor it there for two days.

In fact legally those coordinates are on land.

As always, it is a bit more complex than that. British charts use the Lowest Astronomical Tide – that is the furthest the tide normally goes out in a year. So on British charts the vessel is 100 yards above the low water mark when the tide is at its lowest. US charts, which show a more normal low tide, show it as being just below the low water line. But that still puts it in very shallow water indeed.

Consider this. There is very little tide in the Gulf. The highest tidal range there is a vertical fall of only nine feet, and that is closer to the Arabian sea. Perhaps someone can find the draught of the Indian vessel when it left port (Lloyds List should have this). But it was laden with cars. I cannot conceive of it having a draught of less than twelve feet, possibly a good lot more.

In short, unless I am missing something very important, it looks like it would be very hard to get that Indian vessel to those coordinates at high tide, and it would certainly ground at low tide, pretty well at any time of year.

Before we leap to any conclusions, I can see at least three other possible explanations:

The mud and sands have shifted substantially since the charts were made, or it has been radically dredged

Sea levels in the Gulf at the time in question were, for some reason, unusually high; perhaps with some very local effect from very high outflow from the rivers

Neither the people who contacted me nor I can read a chart properly

What I am looking for are technical contributions to explain the alleged problem. Until we have clarified that, I would be grateful if the political pundits could hold fire. I am not saying that the coordinates were wrong, or that the ship could not be in that position.

For the many thousands of New York Times readers currently linking to here, you probably want to scroll down and read the posts towards the bottom of the front page first, then work your way scrolling up.

Don’t miss clicking on the comments, as other people’s contributions are often more interesting than my own.

From IndyMedia UK

Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan with over 20 years of foreign affairs experience, talks about torture and human righs abuses in Uzbekistan. He presented his book: “Murder in Samarkand – A British Ambassador’s Controversial Defiance of Tyranny in the War on Terror” at the Edinburgh Independent and Radical Bookfair on Friday, 13th of October 2006, at the session on “Political Terrorism and the US Imperial Project”.

On a day when BBC News reports that a third of the world’s population supports torture in some cases, it seems important to give you the opportunity to listen to this audio, where Craig Murray talks about human rights abuses and torture in Uzbekistan.

Most importantly, he gives examples about “false-positive” outcomes of torture cases, where people consent to any charges brought forward just to stop the pain on themselves or their families members.

He also gives examples on how Britain and the US support the torture by using the extracted, often false information, to back up their success rate on the War in Terror, and by backing the abusive regime of Islam Karimov.

Go here to read the full article and listen to the interviews

By Becky Hogge in OpenDemocacry

As the UK government abuses copyright law to stifle free speech and obstruct freedom of information, the case of Craig Murray reveals how the impulse of power to control dissent is crushing democratic rights anew.

It is nearly two decades since the British government tried to ban Spycatcher, and you would expect them to have learned their lesson. After throwing ?2 million in legal expenses after the biography of former MI5 operative Peter Wright, her majesty’s government was forced to admit defeat in October 1988, leaving ministers red-faced and Wright seriously in the black, thanks to the free publicity afforded his book by his repeated trips to courts across the globe. Eighteen years on, it’s the turn of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to have a go. But this time they have a new weapon in their armoury – the vagaries of the British copyright system.

The book in question is Murder in Samarkand, the memoirs of former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray. In it, Murray exposes the human rights abuses of Islam Karimov’s regime and details how, during his stay in Tashkent, he came to realise that the “War on Terror”, in which Uzbekistan played ally to the US and UK, was essentially a hypocrisy. The book charts Murray’s confrontation with his superiors at the FCO, his allegations of intelligence obtained under torture, the FCO’s rebuttal of his fears, and their alleged attempts to drive him out of office.

Murray held off publishing Murder in Samarkand for many months as he exchanged letters with the FCO’s Richard Stagg on his intention to publish the book. Although Murray made cuts from the original text, the FCO still threatened legal action were he to publish, on the grounds that the book remained defamatory, inappropriate, misleading and a breach of trust. Stagg also warned that a case against the memoirs might be pursued under copyright law.

(more…)

As our regular visitors will know, one of the functions of this site is to act as a reference source or database of articles, speeches and interviews relating to the work of Craig Murray, Uzbekistan, Jack Straw, and the UK and US Governments involvement in extraordinary rendition and torture.

To try and ensure the site is as complete as possible, five items have been retrospectively added today in various sections. Their titles and original publication dates are detailed below:

Teeing off in Tashkent – 19th April 2005

(Interview)

Uzbekistan, Great Britain and the Ousting of Craig Murray – June 23rd

(Article)

Uzbek forces open fire on protesters – 14th May 2005

(Interview)

Pressure Uzbekistan on rights – June 18th 2005

(Article)

Uzbeks Protest at British Envoy’s Sacking – 29th October 2004

(Article)