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Can we stop this terrible practice?

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Letters to the Independent

Sir: I really wish I hadn’t read the article by Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan (“The reality of Britain’s reliance on torture”, 27 October). I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that such vile things can happen in our name, but I am: when it has been spelt out so clearly one cannot but face the scarcely believable truth.

The really appalling thing is that ordinary people are powerless to stop this hideous trade. We can protest until we are blue in the face, to no avail. I wept when I read that article: is there really nothing we can do to put and end to this evil?

EVANGELINE EVANS,

JORDANS, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

Sir: Former Ambassador Craig Murray’s article was a salutory warning about what happens when human rights principles are overlooked by the exigencies of political pragmatism in the so-called “War on terror”.

DR DAVID LOWRY

STONELEIGH, SURREY

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A political war that backfired: former UK ambassador to the US launches his memoirs on Iraq

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In advance of publication of his memoirs, Britain’s former ambassador to the US describes Tony Blair as liking the vision thing, but weak on detail, not interested in the ballast behind the ideas, and impatient.

Julian Glover and Ewen MacAskill in the Guardian

A small, hand-addressed blue box on Sir Christopher Meyer’s desk provides a clue to his background. It contains a miniature stone replica of the White House and was a gift this month from Karl Rove, President Bush’s political adviser. It a sign that Sir Christopher is not just another former ambassador but a man close to the heart of Republican America.

As British ambassador to Washington from 1997 to February 2003, he was the man who introduced a wary Tony Blair to Mr Bush. He led the way towards the unexpected mating of New Labour with the American right, a relationship that eventually took Britain to war in Iraq.

He did not just arrange meetings between the two leaders but spoke up at them. He was a confidant of both sides, with regular private meetings with everyone in the White House from vice-president Dick Cheney and his aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby, now being prosecuted in Washington, to the president himself. He reinvented what it meant to be Britain’s ambassador to Washington, a dominant figure in the capital’s social life as well as in politics.

His posting overlapped the Clinton and Bush administrations and, with access to both the US and British sides, he was well placed to track the debate in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. He supported the war but is far from happy about the handling of the aftermath. “I don’t believe the enterprise is doomed necessarily, though, God, it does not look good,” he says in an interview with the Guardian marking the publication of his memoirs, DC Confidential. “A lot of people think what we are going to end up with is precisely what we didn’t want.”

It is not a book that will make comfortable reading for Mr Blair and those who served him. He is the first of the insiders involved in the planning of the war to publish a first-hand account. He is not flattering about the way the prime minister, his ministers and advisers went about their task. Now as chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, Britain’s newspaper watchdog, he works from a small, shabby office just off Fleet Street, a far cry from the embassy receptions and official Rolls-Royce that once ferried him around the US capital. He looks at the breakdown of Iraq now with the detachment of an outsider – but one with a unique insight into how the war came about and what could have been done differently.

(more…)

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Reputation of SOAS takes a knock

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From the Kavkaz Centre

The reputation of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) has taken another knock after one of its lecturers was accused of being the “Western cheerleader” for the Uzbek brutal dictator Islam Karimov.

Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan also accused SOAS director of “arrogance”. The charge was leveled at SOAS director MR Colin Bundy by Mr Murray in a dispute over one of the school’s lecturers accused of producing a “propagandist” report on the Massacre of Andijan.

The person in question, Shirin Akiner, (pictured) was accused by Mr Murray as well as human rights and liberty campaigners, of producing a report which is neither independent nor academically sound. The findings of the report, written by the SOAS lecturer in Central Asian Studies, seem to completely indorse the Uzbek government line, putting the blame squarely on whom she calls “Islamist insurgents”.

Ms Akiner recently went on a US tour promoting the report as a counter to what is known to have taken place on that fateful day in May. She accuses the Western governments and, in particular, the media of false reporting and says the Uzbek government is right not to allow an independent international investigation into the events.

She has come under fierce attack from NGOs who questioned how she was allowed, by the Uzbek government, to conduct her own investigation at a time when no journalists or NGOs where given access. Ms Akiner refuted accusations that she was invited in by the Uzbek government to give support to their version of events.

The SOAS lecturer said she went to Uzbekistan to deal with the aftermath of the cancellation, due to the Andijan violence, of a NATO conference on religious extremism that she had organized. Once in Tashkent, Akiner said, “I squeezed out time for myself to go to Andijan.”

In his email to the SOAS director, Craig Murray stated that his qualm is not with Ms Akiner’s political views, but rather that an institute such as SOAS can have a lecturer in the affairs of such a volatile region, who admits to having ties to the Uzbek regime and actively acts as its “apologist”.

Mr Murray questioned the lecturer’s objectivity and called on the school’s ethics committee to investigate this case. “The idea that in a totalitarian state evidence of an alleged government atrocity can be gained by allowing the government to produce the witnesses, and interviewing them in the presence of government officials, is ludicrous, as any decent academic would recognise.” wrote Mr Murray.

In a responding email, Mr Bundy appeared to dismissed points raised by the ex-diplomat as “unsubstantiated” and ignored his calls for further investigate by the School. That prompted an angry response from Mr Murray who accused the director of being “arrogant” and of failing to realise the damage Ms Akiner is causing to the reputation of SOAS.

In a statement to The Muslim Weekly SOAS reiterated their stand and say they have not received further evidence from Mr Murray. “The allegations against Shirin Akiner contained in Craig Murray’s letter to Colin Bundy were unsubstantiated. Professor Bundy invited Mr Murray to supply verifiable evidence to support his assertions but none has been provided.”

They have also refuted other allegations that they have in the past been involved in sponsoring school text material including propaganda books by the regime.

“With regard to the mention of Islam Karimov’s publications in Mr Murray’s letter, SOAS has no financial or other involvement with these publications. (One of the books, published by Curzon Press in 1997 as a commercial venture, features comments by Dr Akiner on the dust jacket. The School understands that Dr Akiner was not paid for this contribution to the publication.)”

Highlighting what he sees as the double standards of the School he cites the case of Nasser Amin who was treated quite differently by the School. He sais “Professor Colin Bundy, head of SOAS, is extremely keen to defend Shirin Akiner, Karimov’s Western cheerleader and a SOAS lecturer. But it seems that his defence of academic freedom only applies to those on one side of the argument.

“Akiner is perfectly at liberty to defend Karimov’s right to massacre the opposition, but Bundy just three months ago censured an Islamic student (Nasser Amin) who argued that the Palestinians have the right to use force to resist occupation. You don’t have to agree with the student’s view to find Bundy’s different approach to the two cases interesting…

Any suggestions as to the explanation of Bundy’s contradictory attitude in the Amin and Akiner cases would be interesting to hear. ”

The student in question, Nasser Amin, also accused the School’s director of double standards and again called for his resignation.

Mr Amin said “Bundy is not a neutral, disinterested moderator defending all points of view at the School. He is someone who defends free speech when it comes to savagery against Muslims, in Andijan and Gaza, and silences those who oppose this savagery, particularly it seems Muslim students. Shame on him.”

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US Lawmakers React to CIA Prison Story

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By Dan Robinson writing in VOA

Members of Congress are reacting to a newspaper report that the CIA has been running a network of secret prisons since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to hold and interrogate terrorist suspects. There was criticism from congressional Democrats.

In its reporting on what it described as a covert prison system run by the CIA, the Washington Post newspaper said funding for the secret sites was provided through the regular intelligence budget approved by Congress each year.

That budget has been estimated at about $40 billion, but the exact figure is not known because it is classified. But for lawmakers responsible for funding the U.S. intelligence system, and who approved legislation to reorganize that system after months of tense debate, the Washington Post report is certain to cause more anxiety.

Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer Wednesday described the newspaper report as startling, adding she intends to inquire with members of the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee if they knew about the details mentioned in the newspaper article.

On the floor of the House of Representatives, the Washington Post report brought this comment from (Democratic) Congressman Jim McGovern of Massachusetts. “This is not what America stands for. This is more like Chile under [former dictator Augusto] Pinochet, or Argentina under the [former] junta,” he said.

The Washington Post report also comes at a time when debate is raging over U.S. military operations in Iraq, the CIA leak case in which an aide to Vice President Dick Cheney was indicted, and the issue of treatment of prisoners and detainees.

The Senate version of a defense spending bill includes an amendment, approved by a vote of 90 to 9 last month, to ban the cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of any detainee in U.S. custody. However, the Bush administration, with Vice President Dick Cheney taking the lead, says such provision, sponsored by Republican Senator John McCain, would harm counter-terrorism efforts, and proposed that employees of the CIA should be exempted.

In the House, Congressman Ed Markey is proposing to prohibit the practice of extraordinary rendition under which terrorist suspects have been transported to other countries for interrogation.

Asked about the Washington Post report Wednesday, presidential spokesman Scott McClellan declined to discuss specific intelligence activities, adding only that President Bush has an important responsibility to protect the American people.

National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, had this comment when asked about the newspaper report during a briefing on President Bush’s upcoming trip to South America:

“The fact that they are secret, assuming there are such sites, does not mean that, simply because something is, you know when some people say that the test of your principles are what you do when no one is looking. And the president has insisted that whether it is in the public or is in the private, the same principles will apply and the same principles will be respected, and to the extent that people do not measure up to those principles, there will be accountability and responsibility,” he said.

The Washington Post report also comes as congressional Democrats step up pressure on Republicans on the issue of pre-Iraq war intelligence and the CIA leak case. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, wrote to the president Wednesday criticizing what they call categorically false statements by presidential spokesman Scott McClellan.

On Tuesday, Senator Reid used a special rule to shut down the Senate to underscore dissatisfaction with what he calls foot-dragging by Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Republicans responded angrily, calling the move a stunt by Democrats, but agreed to issue a report later this month on the status of the Intelligence Committee probe of intelligence used to justify the Iraq war.

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Europeans react to Wasington Post report on secret CIA torture facilities

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From EU Observer

A media report alleging the CIA runs a secret camp in eastern Europe where it interrogates al Qaeda suspects has caused strong concern in Europe, with MEPs calling for an EU investigation into the matter.

According to an article in leading US newspaper the Washington Post on Wednesday (2 November), the US intelligence branch, the CIA, has detained top Al Qaeda suspects at a compound dating back to the Soviet era and located somewhere in eastern Europe.

The newspaper does not say if the camp is located on existing EU territory or in Romania or Bulgaria, for example. It is also unclear if there is more than one camp, with the paper sometimes referring to the “eastern European countries” concerned in the plural, adding that US officials advised against publication of the countries’ names for fear of terrorist reprisals.

Senior intelligence sources told the Washington Post that the al Qaeda prisoners are held in complete isolation from the outside world, have no recognised legal rights, and are probably subject to the CIA’s controversial “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques”.

European Commission and EU diplomats on Wednesday (2 November) declined to comment on the report. “This is an issue between the US and any member states concerned”, a commission spokeswoman said. The spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana indicated that “this has nothing to do with the European Union”.

MEPs want Brussels to take action

But MEPs have called for an urgent EU investigation into the matter.

UK liberal MEP and member of the parliament’s civil liberties committee baroness Sarah Ludford said “I will be asking commissioner Frattini to check out urgently this suggestion that EU member states may be implicated in the most barbaric practices of the misguided US ‘war on terror'”.

She added that if EU member states were involved “this has the most devastating implications for the EU’s credibility in upholding human rights and the rule of law”.

Dutch green MEP Kathalijne Buitenweg, also a member of the civil liberties committee as well as of the EU-US parliamentary delegation said that “Mr Solana should clarify with the Americans what exactly is going on”.

“If human rights are violated in an EU country, or in a candidate member state, than this is an EU issue”, she added.

Ms Buitenweg indicated the parliament’s civil liberties and foreign affairs committees should discuss ways for the European Parliament to further research the issue itself.

The member announced she would personally raise the question at an EU-US parliamentary meeting in December.

Trauma from Soviet times

The matter looks set to cause outrage in eastern Europe, which is traditionally strongly allied with the US but which also experienced grave human rights violations in the past by former communist secret services.

Slovak centre-right MEP Miroslav Mikolasik said these memories made him “convinced” that the CIA camp cannot possibly be located in his own country.

“We had too painful experiences from the Soviet time with the conditions under which political prisoners were held”, he said, adding “We hate these kinds of procedures”.

The Wahington Post notes that CIA interrogators abroad are permitted to use the CIA’s “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques”.

The techniques, prohibited under the US’ own military law as well as under UN rules, include tactics such as “waterboarding,” in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.

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CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons

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Debate Is Growing Within Agency About Legality and Morality of Overseas System Set Up After 9/11

By Dana Priest writing in the Washington Post

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.

The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA’s unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA’s covert actions.

The existence and locations of the facilities — referred to as “black sites” in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents — are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.

The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.

While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.

But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military — which operates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress — have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system. Those concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Porter J. Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody.

Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency’s approach, arguing that the successful defense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

The Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.

The secret detention system was conceived in the chaotic and anxious first months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the working assumption was that a second strike was imminent.

Since then, the arrangement has been increasingly debated within the CIA, where considerable concern lingers about the legality, morality and practicality of holding even unrepentant terrorists in such isolation and secrecy, perhaps for the duration of their lives. Mid-level and senior CIA officers began arguing two years ago that the system was unsustainable and diverted the agency from its unique espionage mission.

“We never sat down, as far as I know, and came up with a grand strategy,” said one former senior intelligence officer who is familiar with the program but not the location of the prisons. “Everything was very reactive. That’s how you get to a situation where you pick people up, send them into a netherworld and don’t say, ‘What are we going to do with them afterwards?’ ”

(more…)

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Parliaments in Canada, Italy, France, Sweden and the Netherlands investigate CIA operations

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From the Washington Post

Scottish police have launched an investigation of so-called CIA “torture flights” that allegedly transport captured terrorism suspects to undisclosed locations for interrogation, according to the Glasgow Sunday Herald. The investigation is the latest sign of growing European unease with U.S. policy of “extraordinary rendition.”

The probe was triggered by a Sunday Herald series last month that reported that CIA planes had stopped at two Scottish airports 149 times for refueling and logistical support.

“The program,” the SH said, “targets suspected Islamic terrorists, captures and delivers them to US-friendly nations which are quite happy to use torture to get the information the US wants for the war on terror.”

Former CIA counterterrorism officer Michael Scheuer defended the practice of rendition, but said he favored classifying the terror suspects as prisoners of war and questioning them in the United States under the terms of the Geneva Convention. That proposal, he says, was rejected by both the Clinton and Bush administrations

“We shot ourselves in both feet,” Scheuer told the SH.

Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the British government ignored his reports that terror suspects sent there were routinely tortured.

“I warned ministers it was illegal,” he said. “But the politicians were very keen to just keep going ahead.”

The CIA declined to comment. “One CIA official merely laughed when told that Scottish police were to investigate,” the SH reported.

As The Post’s Dana Priest reports today, “Parliaments in Canada, Italy, France, Sweden and the Netherlands have opened inquiries into alleged CIA operations that secretly captured their citizens or legal residents and transferred them to the agency’s prisons.”

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A call to suspend Uzbekistan from NATO partnership

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Below is the House of Commons debate on Uzbekistan from 1 November. Greg Hands is to be congratulated on tabling the question, with very good follow up from David Drew and Alistair Carmichael.

The point on NATO Partnership for Peace (PfP)is an important one. Last Autumn one hundred and fifty British troops trained in Uzbekistan alongside Uzbek forces whose principle role is the suppression of their own people. To impose an arms embargo while retaining Uzbekistan as a member of NATO PfP is meaningless. I hope we can start a campaign to suspend Uzbekistan from NATO PfP. In the UK, please contact your MP and MEP to this effect using the fax your MP facility on the front of this website. In other NATO members please write to your own representatives, to urge the suspension of this tyrannical regime from NATO PfP.

4. Mr. Greg Hands (Hammersmith and Fulham) (Con): If he will make a statement on the steps that the United Kingdom has taken to investigate the circumstances surrounding the Andijan massacre in Uzbekistan on 13 May. [23244]

The Minister for Europe (Mr. Douglas Alexander): We have been at the forefront of efforts to establish what happened in Andijan on 13 May. Our ambassador and his embassy team have visited the area, spoken to eyewitnesses and met NGOs. Our ambassador has spoken repeatedly to the Uzbek Government. We remain as convinced as ever of the need for a credible, external inquiry. That is why, under our presidency, the European Union has adopted a series of new measures against the Uzbek Government, including an arms embargo and a targeted visa ban.

Mr. Hands: I appreciate what the Minister says about the arms embargo, but is it not incongruous that his Government should support the Uzbekistan’s continued membership of the NATO partnership for peace programme?

Mr. Alexander: The NATO partnership for peace process relies not just on the will of one country, the United Kingdom, but on a number of other members of NATO. I respect the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I think that we have taken what opportunities are available to us to register our profound concern at the failure to establish an independent inquiry and to take the practical measures that have been outlined through the European Union.

Mr. David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op): It would appear from the various e-mails that the Uzbek embassy kindly sends me that it has already made up its mind about the relative guilt of those who were shot. Is it not about time that the international community took the Uzbek regime much more seriously and tried to do something about it, rather than showing it far too much leniency as it has done in the past?

Mr. Alexander: I assure my hon. Friend that we take extremely seriously both the monitoring of the trial and, more generally, the need for an independent inquiry into the events in Andijan. We have led the international efforts to co-ordinate monitoring of the trial on behalf of the European Union, and we expect verdicts on the 15 defendants in only a few days. I assure my hon. Friend that the matter will continue to be of concern to the British Government.

Mr. Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD): Has there not already been a series of independent inquiries, organised by groups such as Human Rights

1 Nov 2005 : Column 713

Watch and the Institute for War & Peace Reporting? Have they not established that what happened in Andijan was at least as bad as what happened in Tiananmen square? Should we not now seek sanctions against the Uzbek Government, similar to those that were imposed on China after Tiananmen square?

Mr. Alexander: We believe that the Uzbek authorities did use excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate force, but we also believe that the case for an independent inquiry endures.

As for the specific efforts made by the British Government, I have already mentioned the imposition of an arms embargo under the British leadership and presidency, and the visa restrictions imposed on those deemed to have been responsible for the disproportionate use of force in Andijan. All technical meetings have been suspended under the European Union’s partnership and co-operation agreement. We will of course support the reorientation of the Commission’s funding programme for Uzbekistan to promote an increased focus on poverty reduction along with democracy, human rights and civil societies. We have taken action, but the Council of the European Union has not ruled out additional steps if they prove necessary.

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Uzbekistan: Jailed Opposition Leader’s Health at Risk

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From Human Rights Watch

Uzbek Authorities Must Ensure Immediate Medical Care

(Tashkent, November 1, 2005) ‘ The Uzbek government should ensure immediate medical attention for jailed opposition leader Sanjar Umarov, including an independent psychiatric examination, Human Rights Watch said today. Today marks a week since Umarov’s attorney found him naked and incoherent in his cell.

The latest incident in the Uzbek government’s ruthless crackdown on dissent, Umarov’s arrest and detention appear to be politically motivated.

‘Sanjar Umarov needs to receive immediate medical care,’ said Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. ‘We are deeply concerned for his safety and well-being.’

The leader of the opposition political movement ‘Sunshine Coalition,’ Umarov was arrested on the night of October 22. When his attorney went to see him three days later in the detention facility of the Tashkent City Police Department, he found Umarov naked in his basement cell, covering his face with his hands and rocking back and forth. He did not react when the attorney called his name. Since this visit, his attorney has not been able to talk to his client or to the investigator on his case. The authorities have failed to act on his attorney’s requests for an urgent independent psychiatric evaluation.

Authorities have charged Umarov, a permanent resident of the United States, with embezzlement related to an oil company in which he formerly had an ownership interest. He apparently has no current business involvement in Uzbekistan. According to Uzbek law, since a formal arrest warrant had already been issued, Umarov should have been transferred to pre-trial detention rather than being held in the temporary detention cells of the police station, where detainees are most at risk of torture.

‘Umarov’s arrest appears to be politically motivated,’ said Cartner. ‘The authorities should release him pending an independent review of the charges against him.’

Established earlier this year, the ‘Sunshine Coalition’ is made up of businessmen and academics. It has close ties with the Ozod Dekhon (‘Free Peasants’) opposition party. The coalition openly criticizes what it terms ‘corrupt government bureaucracies’ in Uzbekistan on its website. Its Economic Advisory Council promotes a ‘Road Map for Prosperity,’ an action plan to implement liberal, free-market economic reforms. Umarov only recently returned to Uzbekistan from a visit to the United States and Russia, where he publicly discussed the coalition’s ideas for economic reform. On October 17, Umarov wrote an open letter to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in which he called for economic reforms in Uzbekistan and closer economic cooperation with Russia.

The Uzbek government has a longstanding record of suppressing any kind of independent opposition. The crackdown on political opponents, human rights defenders and journalists has reached crisis proportions in the aftermath of the massacre in Andijan on May 13, in which government forces killed hundreds of unarmed civilians.

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The Dangers of Friendly Dictatorships

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By Farhod Inogambaev writing in The Moscow Times

The political situation in Uzbekistan is spinning out of control, with anger growing in society and even among some moderate members of the ruling elite against President Islam Karimov.

The arrest last week of Sanjar Umarov, chairman of the Sunshine Coalition and the last serious opposition figure willing to work with the dictatorial regime, is just the latest sad sign of the country’s deterioration into tyranny.

Karimov, who has ruled the Central Asian state of 25 million people for more than 15 years, has shut down opposition parties and conducted a relentless crackdown on political foes and practicing Muslims, jailing thousands. In May, Karimov’s trained militia suppressed a popular uprising in the eastern city of Andijan, killing several hundred civilians — in many cases shooting them in the back as they fled the city’s central square. The arrest of Umarov — and mounting evidence that he is being “treated” with psychotropic drugs, just as political opponents were “treated” under Stalin — should be the last straw in American and Russian cooperation with the regime.

Umarov’s arrest comes after a visit to the United States and Russia in September where he outlined his coalition’s economic reform program. Umarov sent an open letter in late October to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who was visiting Uzbekistan at the time, expressing his intention to seek a solution to the political crisis in Uzbekistan by establishing a dialogue between the opposition and the government. Apparently this, along with his denunciation of the Andijan massacre, was enough for Karimov to consider him a threat.

The only good news surrounding Uzbekistan these days is that Western governments are finally starting to see the true face of Karimov’s regime. Immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, Uzbekistan began receiving large sums of money for hosting American troops at its Karshi-Khanabad Air Base, called K-2, a few hundred kilometers from the Afghan border. The base played a crucial role in the coalition’s success in Afghanistan, and Karimov was rewarded not just with American money, but also with legitimacy. In March 2002, he visited the White House at the invitation of President George W. Bush to sign a joint declaration on strategic relations. Karimov used his newfound friendship with Washington as cover to intensify human rights abuses throughout Uzbekistan.

The Andijan massacre caused the U.S. administration and EU governments finally to reconsider their policies toward Karimov’s Uzbekistan. In September, the European Union introduced limited sanctions, including an arms embargo and a travel ban for senior Uzbek officials. This doesn’t just mean no more shopping trips to Paris or London for Karimov’s family and their cronies; it also makes it difficult for them to access their European bank accounts and other property in Europe.

The United States also criticized Karimov’s response to the Andijan uprising and joined in the chorus of governments and rights groups calling for an independent international investigation. In response, the Uzbek Foreign Ministry sent an ultimatum letter to the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent calling for U.S. withdrawal from the K-2 base within 180 days.

Hopefully this will spell the end of American cooperation with the Karimov regime. According to a recent State Department report on foreign aid, U.S. assistance to Uzbekistan from October 2004 to September 2005 amounted to $91 million, with $63 million of that earmarked for security and law enforcement. The United States should cease all support, financial and otherwise, to Karimov and introduce targeted sanctions similar to those the EU has imposed. There is growing support for this in Congress.

But businesses with major operations in Uzbekistan and ties to the Karimov family — like Coca-Cola, the Newmont Gold Company, cotton trader Dunavant Enterprises and agricultural equipment manufacturer Case — have a strong interest in maintaining the status quo.

Coca-Cola is a good example of how business is done in Karimov’s Uzbekistan. In 2001, The Coca-Cola Company, which holds the franchise for bottling in Uzbekistan, allowed its joint venture with the Uzbek government to be taken over by Karimov’s older daughter, Gulnara Karimova. In a communist-style, gangster approach to a takeover, Karimova’s estranged husband, Mansur Maqsudi, who owned the majority of Coca-Cola Uzbekistan, found that his shares had been nationalized and his employees chased out of the country. With the approval, if not assistance, of The Coca-Cola Company, Karimova proceeded to loot millions of dollars from the Coca-Cola Bottlers Uzbekistan joint venture.

The American-Uzbekistan Chamber of Commerce, which represents Coca-Cola and others, is lobbying Washington to keep up good relations with Karimov. In an August letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Chamber president James Cornell said the recent downgrades in relations with Tashkent “threaten several vital interests of the United States, including long-established trade and investment relations between the two countries.” The United States should not bow to this corporate pressure, but rather maintain a consistent, principled foreign policy that promotes democracy and punishes gross violations of human rights. Nowhere is this more needed today than in Uzbekistan.

Russia, too, needs to come to grips with the fact that its partnership with Karimov is more of a liability than an asset. As Karimov has turned toward Russia and China in the wake of U.S. criticism, Moscow has acquiesced by endorsing Tashkent’s official version of the events at Andijan, calling the protesters Islamic terrorists and fundamentalists.

But the Kremlin must understand that it is not in its long-term interest to have a political basket case in its backyard, and that a democratic, economically liberal Uzbekistan is in everyone’s best interest.

Farhod Inogambaev, an Uzbek political exile and recent research fellow at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, is a graduate student at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.

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A gushing book review from Shirin Akiner

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What Miers is to Bush, Akiner is to Karimov. Here his cheerleader introduces one of his execrable books in terms. These are compulsory study at all levels of Uzbek education, from primary school to PhD. I met a lady submitting her PhD work in Maths, who was worried because she had to sit a compulsory exam reproducing and praising Karimov’s work.

Craig

The review was written about ‘Uzbekistan on the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century: Challenges to Stability and Progress’ which was written by Karimov and published in 1998.

The text in its original context can be viewed here

The book is also still available from the Uzbek government web site

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Foreign Affairs Committee informed of documentary evidence that challenges the veracity of Jack Straw

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We post below an e-mail from Craig Murray to the UK Foreign Affairs Committee. It draws attention to documentary evidence that questions previous oral testimony given by Jack Straw. Will the FAC call it and use it?

From: Craig Murray [mailto:[email protected]]

Sent: 31 October 2005 11:17

To: ‘PRIESTLEY, Steve’

Subject: RE: extraordinary rendition

Dear Mr Priestley,

Thank you. I have seen the draft transcript of Mr Straw’s evidence in his recent appearance before the Committee, and his references to me.

I would strongly urge that the Committee obtain a number of FCO documents which provide essential support my assertions on the use of intelligence got under torture, which were questioned by Mr Straw. I believe this documentary evidence is much more compelling than Mr Straw’s perfectly accurate assertion to the committee that I am a bad electoral campaigner. It seems to me in poor taste for Mr Straw to rejoice to the committee that the BNP should beat anybody, and of dubious relevance to the case.

Chief among the essential documents are Tashkent telegram number 63 of 22 July 2004, and the FCO’s reply to it, plus the further response from Tashkent. The FCO reply contains reference to ‘a series of meetings’. The Committee might wish to see the minutes of that series of meetings.

I believe that for the Committee to reach the truth of the question of British use of torture material, it is essential to see the minute of the meeting held on the specific subject of torture intelligence in the office of Linda Duffield, Director Wider Europe. I was summoned back to London for this meeting. I believe the date was 7 March 2003, but I might be a little out. It was the only meeting ever held between these four people. Present were Linda Duffield, Director Wider Europe, Matthew Kydd, Head of Whitehall Liaison Department, Sir Michael Wood, Legal Adviser and I, Ambassador to Tashkent. That meeting was minuted, and I have seen the minute which is held by Whitehall Liaison Department.

On 13 March 2003 Sir Michael Wood wrote a minute to Linda Duffield, copied to me, about part of the discussion at the meeting. I believe that this minute would also much interest the Committee.

I quite understand that the Committee cannot simply take my word when it is called into question by the Secretary of State. That is why I believe it is essential that the documentary evidence is made available to the committee.

I should be very grateful if you could pass copies of this email to all members of the committee. If you are precluded from doing this, I should be most grateful if you could tell me, so I may send copies directly. If a more formal means of communication is required, I should also be happy to oblige.

Craig Murray

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Jack Straw dodges questions on torture and extraordinary rendition

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Foreign Affairs Committee

Foreign Policy Aspects of the War against Terrorism

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE from Monday 24 October 2005

Q105 Sandra Osborne: I would like to ask you about the issue of extraordinary rendition. In response to this Committee’s report of last year on the war against terrorism, the government said that it was not aware of the use of its territory or air space for the purposes of extraordinary rendition. However, it appears that there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that the UK air space is indeed being utilised for this purpose, albeit mainly in the media. Some of the suggestions seem to be extremely detailed. For example, the Guardian has reported that aircraft involved in operations have flown into the UK at least 210 times since 9/11, an average of one flight a week. It appears that the favourite destination is Prestwick Airport, which is next to my constituency, as it happens. Can you comment on that? What role is the UK playing in extraordinary rendition?

Mr Straw: The position in respect of extraordinary rendition was set out in the letter that the head of our parliamentary team wrote to Mr Priestly, your Clerk, on 11 March; and the position has not changed. We are not aware of the use of our territory or air space for the purpose of extraordinary rendition. We have not received any requests or granted any permissions for use of UK territory or air space for such purposes. It is perfectly possible that there have been two hundred movements of United States aircraft in and out of the United Kingdom and I would have thought it was many more; but that is because we have a number of UN air force bases here, which, under the Visiting Forces Act and other arrangements they are entitled to use under certain conditions. I do not see for a second how the conclusion could be drawn from the fact that there have been some scores of movements of US military aircraft – well, so what – that that therefore means they have been used for rendition. That is a very long chain!

Q106 Sandra Osborne: The UN Commission on Human Rights has started an inquiry into the British Government’s role in this. Is the Government co-operating fully with that inquiry? Why would they start an inquiry if there were no reason to believe that this was actually happening?

Mr Straw: People start inquiries for all sorts of reasons. I assume we are co-operating with it. I am not aware of any requests, but we always co-operate with such requests.

Q107 Mr Keetch: They are not flying under US military flags; these are Gulfstream aircraft used by the CIA. They have a 26-strong fleet of Gulfstream aircraft that are used for this purpose. These aircraft are not coming into British spaces; they are coming into airports. Some are into bases like Northolt, and some into bases like Prestwick. Whilst it is always good to have the head of your parliamentary staff respond to our Clerk, Mr Priestley, could you give us an assurance that you will investigate these specific flights; and, if it is the case that these flights are being used for the process of extraordinary rendition, which is contrary to international law and indeed contrary to the stated policy of Her Majesty’s Government, would you attempt to see if they should stop?

Mr Straw: I would like to see what it is that is being talked about here. I am very happy to endorse, as you would expect, and I did endorse, the letter sent by our parliamentary team to your Clerk on 11 March. I am happy, for the avoidance of any doubt, to say that I specifically endorse its contents. If there is evidence, we will look at it, but a suggestion in a newspaper that there have been flights by unspecified foreign aircraft in and out of the United Kingdom cannot possibly add up to evidence that our air space or our facilities have been used for the purpose of unlawful rendition. It just does not.

Q108 Mr Keetch: I accept that, but if there were evidence of that, you would join with us, presumably, in condemning —–

Mr Straw: I am not going to pre-judge an inquiry. If there were evidence, we would look at it. So far there we have not seen any evidence.

Q109 Richard Younger-Ross: Our former Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has stated in a document to us: “I can confirm it is a positive policy decision by the US and UK to use Uzbek torture material.” He states that the evidence is that the aircraft that my colleague referred to earlier, the Gulfstreams, are taking detainees back to Uzbekistan who are then being tortured. Is that not some indication that these detainees are being transferred through the UK?

Mr Straw: It is Mr Murray’s opinion. Mr Murray, as you may know, stood in my constituency. He got fewer votes than the British National Party, and notwithstanding the fact that he assured the widest possible audience within the constituency to his views about use of torture. I set out the British Government’s position on this issue on a number of occasions, including in evidence both here and to the Intelligence and Security Committee. I wrote a pretty detailed letter to a constituent of mine back in June, setting out our position. As I said there, there are no circumstances in which British officials use torture, nor any question of the British Government seeking to justify the use of torture. Again, the British Government, including the terrorist and security agencies, has never used torture for any purpose including for information, nor would we instigate or connive with others in doing so. People have to make their own judgment whether they think I am being accurate or not.

Q110 Mr Illsley: Foreign Secretary, the letter which you supplied to the Committee in March which gave the conclusion that the British Government is not aware of the use of its territory or air space for the purpose of extraordinary rendition was taken at face value by most members of the Committee at that time, before the election. We took that to mean that we were not aware of any extraordinary rendition, and that it was not happening. The press reports were therefore something of a surprise. Would our Government be contacted by any country using our airspace, taking suspects to other countries? Would we be asked for permission or would there be any circumstances where we would be contacted; or is it the case that it could well be happening but that our Government is not aware of it simply because we have not been informed, or our permission is not necessary?

Mr Straw: Mr Illsley, on the precise circumstances in which foreign governments apply for permission to use British air space, I have to write to you, because it is important that I make that accurate. What Mr Stanton on my behalf said in the letter is exactly the same: why would I, for a second, knowingly provide this Committee with false information, if I had had information about rendition? We do not practise rendition, full-stop. I ought to say that whether rendition is contrary to international law depends on the particular circumstances of the case; it depends on each case, but we do not practise it. I would have to come back to you on that question.

Chairman: We will expect a letter. Thank you very much.

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The sins of Blunkett

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The media are treating the rules Blunkett has now broken as trivial. In fact they are not.

Blunkett took a directorship of, and shares in, a DNA technology firm. The biggest customer in the UK for DNA technology is ‘ the Home Office. This is not primarily in the glamorous world of Police and crime detection, though that is very important and what first comes to the popular mind. An even bigger, and exponentially growing, field for DNA testing is immigration control.

Every day immigration sections in Embassies and High Commissions around the World are overseeing thousands of DNA tests to prove relationships of visa applicants to relatives they wish to join in the UK. This usage expanded massively while Blumkett was Home Secretary ‘ and directly responsible for immigration. The Home Office does not actually pay for the test ‘ the applicant does that ‘ but does supervise the process, including the taking of samples.

So Blunkett is entering a field that is set to benefit directly from his ministerial activities. Few doubt that the government ultimately intends its War on Terror and ID card drive to result in the building of a national DNA ID bank. Again while Blunkett was Home Office Minister, the decision was taken that DNA samples taken from crime suspects will be retained on file, even if the suspect was completely innocent, perhaps one of thousands sampled in a widely spread net in a murder investigation.

DNA is the chosen weapon of Big Brother. That the most enthusiastic enemy of civil liberties should choose to invest in it, should worry us.

It is of course ironic that the other high profile use of DNA testing is paternity suits. It was DNA testing that proved that the right wing American society adulteress that Blunkett chose as his lover, was not carrying his baby. I have nothing at all against illegitimate people ‘ I am not married to my present partner. But maybe God decided Blunkett was enough of a bastard already.

Craig Murray

Pressure on Blunkett continues today with fresh evidence emerging of ignored warnings and doubts about the accreditation status of the company

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Cheney seeks to legalize torture

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From the Herald Today

Amid all the natural and political disasters it faces, the White House is certainly tireless in its effort to legalize torture. This week, Vice President Dick Cheney proposed a novel solution for the moral and legal problems raised by the use of American soldiers to abuse prisoners and the practice of turning captives over to governments willing to act as proxies in doing the torturing. Cheney wants to make it legal for the Central Intelligence Agency to do this wet work.

Cheney’s proposal was made in secret to Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who won the votes of 89 other senators this month to require the civilized treatment of prisoners at camps run by America’s military and intelligence agencies. McCain’s legislation, an amendment to the Defense Department budget bill, would ban the “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment of prisoners. In other words, it would impose age-old standards of democracy and decency on the new prisons.

President Bush’s threat to veto the entire military budget over this issue was bizarre enough by itself, considering that the amendment has the support of more than two dozen former military leaders, including Colin Powell. They know that torture doesn’t produce reliable intelligence and endangers Americans’ lives.

But Cheney’s proposal was even more ludicrous. It would give the president the power to allow government agencies outside the Defense Department (the administration has in mind the CIA) to mistreat and torture prisoners as long as that behavior was part of “counterterrorism operations conducted abroad” and they were not American citizens. That would neatly legalize the illegal prisons the CIA is said to be operating around the world and obviate the need for the torture outsourcing known as extraordinary rendition.

McCain was right to reject this absurd proposal. The House should reject it as well.

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Nobody wants to talk to me’

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This site gets ever more readers ‘ I am pretty chuffed about it. But it doesn’t attract dialogue or debate. We have attracted less than a dozen genuine comments in the six months we have been operating.

At first I put this down to the system which required you to sign in before commenting. So we removed this, and found we still didn’t get any comments. What we did get was an incredible amount of spam, adding links to sex sites from the comments slots. The result was a lot of frustrated people who had googled ‘lesbian hot tub’ and ended up here.

Clearing off this spam was a never-ending task, so we are returning to protecting the comments by a registration process. But I do hope people will start to interact on this site. I am getting lonely, and wondering if anyone except me actually cares about this stuff. I lecture all round the country and abroad, and always end up in interesting discussions. The content of this site isn’t uncontroversial. So why do I have to go to Harry’s Place or Registan if I want dialogue? Please, people, talk to me’

Craig

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Canadian Deported by US to Syria was Allegedly Tortured

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By Howard Williams writing in CNSNews.com (28th October)

Ottawa (CNSNews.com) – A Canadian citizen, deported by the United States to Syria even though no charges had been filed against him, was tortured while in Syrian custody, according to testimony at a judicial inquiry Thursday.

The case of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born engineer who lives with his family in Ottawa, sparked a diplomatic row between Canada and the United States after it was revealed that the U.S. deported him to Syria without informing Canadian authorities and despite the fact that Arar was traveling on a Canadian passport.

The United States claimed that Arar had links with the al Qaeda terrorist network but never charged him.

After a year of intensive diplomatic efforts, Arar was eventually released by Syria and returned to Canada. After months of trying to dodge the issue, the Canadian government agreed to set up a judicial inquiry.

Officially, the inquiry is to discover what role — if any — Canadian officials had in Arar’s arrest and deportation by the United States. However, many are hoping that the inquiry will also cast some light on why the United States chose to deport a Canadian citizen to a country — Syria — known for allegedly harsh interrogation methods.

Those interrogation methods, the inquiry was told Thursday, included physical and psychological torture.

Stephen Toope, a former dean of McGill University’s law school in Montreal, who was appointed to carry out an independent investigation by Ontario Associate Chief Justice Dennis O’Connor, reported that “Arar’s psychological state was seriously damaged and he remains fragile … Economically, the family has been devastated.”

Toope interviewed Arar about his claims that he was tortured, claims originally denied by Canadian authorities, and other Syrian-Canadians who claim to have been tortured while in custody in their native country.

“I am convinced that [Arar’s] description of his treatment in Syria is accurate,” Toope said in his report which was made public Thursday. “I conclude that the stories they tell are credible. I believe that they suffered severe physical and psychological trauma while in detention in Syria.

Toope concluded that “the treatment of Mr. Arar in Far Falestin constituted torture as understood in international law … In addition, the techniques of humiliation and the creation of intense fear were forms of psychological torture.”

American authorities detained Arar in New York when he was returning from a family vacation in Tunisia in September 2002, accusing him of having terrorist connections.

Canadian consular officials said they were not told of Arar’s deportation until after he had been flown out of the United States and despite assurances from U.S. authorities that he would not be deported without prior consultation with Canada.

Washington has refused to allow State Department or FBI officials to testify at the inquiry, which has already discovered that The Royal Canadian Mounted Police supplied information to U.S. law enforcement officials about Arar.

Canada’s Defense Minister, Bill Graham, who was foreign minister at the time Arar was arrested and deported, claimed at the inquiry that he had no reason to believe Arar was being tortured in Syria.

Dan Livermore, director general of Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department’s security and intelligence bureau, said the United States used a process called extraordinary rendition to deport Arar to Syria.

“I find troubling the entire course of activity the American government has embarked upon since about 2001 with respect to what they call extraordinary rendition, a practice which we knew absolutely nothing about,” Livermore claimed.

O’Connor is expected to wrap up his inquiry soon and could produce his final report before the end of the year.

Although not technically part of his mandate, O’Connor could urge Ottawa to seek greater assurances from Washington about the treatment of Canadian citizens taken into custody while in the United States.

Arar, now 35, has consistently denied any links to any terrorist organization and has never been charged in Canada or in the United States with any criminal offense. He obtained his engineering degree in Ottawa and during his one-man campaign for a public inquiry has impressed many Canadians with his fluency in both English and French.

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Opposition leader tortured with drugs

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Today Sanjar Umarov lies, cold, unclothed, drugged and beaten, on the bare floor of a solitary confinement cell in Tashkent.

Last month I had dinner with Sanjar Umarov at Old Ebbitt Grill in Washington, just across from the White House. Sanjar leads Uzbekistan’s newest and best publicised opposition grouping, Sunshine Uzbekistan, which had largely taken over the Peasants and Entrepreneurs’ Party, itself a fairly recent addition to the opposition ranks.

There was a great deal of suspicion about Umarov from longer standing opposition figures. Umarov was an oligarch, from one of the leading regime families. He had made money in oil and cotton trading, both sectors which cannot be accessed without an inside political track. He had also been involved in the Uzdunrobita mobile telephone company, in which the major Uzbek partner was Gulnara Karimova, the President’s daughter. In March 2004 Karimova sold her shares in Uzdunrobita to a Russian company for 212 million dollars, a figure which places a much higher than realistic value on the company.

This transaction was an important stage in the peculiar business dealings between Russia and the Karimov family, which culminated in last November’s deal to allocate the bulk of Uzbekistan’s natural gas reserves to Gazprom. This deal was negotiated between Gulnara Karimova and Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbek born Russian oligarch who bought a substantial number of shares in Corus, the British steel company. Usmanov is also a Director of Gazprom responsible for their affairs in the former Soviet Union outside Russia.

Gulnara received a large cash payment – $88 million, according to my sources ‘ on completion of the Gazpron deal, with further payments to come as gas is exported. Alisher Usmanov gave Putin a sweetener of 40% of the shares in Mapo Bank, an important Russian business bank with a close relationship to several blue chip western firms operating in Russia. The shares were made over to Piotr Jastrejebski, Putin’s private secretary who was a college friend of Alisher Usmanov and shared a flat with him.

This web is closely associated with Karimov’s succession strategy. He is desperate for Gulnara to succeed him, and the cash and Russian support is building up her power base. Some sort of Alisher Usmanov/Gulnara Karimova alliance is Karimov’s first choice to take over, in six or seven years time. This is the background to the diplomatic revolution of the last six months, with Karimov abandoning the US and turning back to the embrace of Mother Russia.

It is worth recalling that the Karimov regime had been aggressively anti-Russian, in terms of both propaganda, and of practical measures of linguistic discrimination. Approximately two million ethnic Russians have fled Uzbekistan since independence in 1991; about 400,000 are left.

This reorientation towards Russia went along with fierce anti-enterprise measures designed to stifle any entrepreneurial activity not under direct control of the Karimov family. This explained the physical closures of borders and bazaars, the crackdown on crash transactions and the channelling of all commercial activity through the state banks.

These developments not only brought still greater economic hardship to the poor, they created losers among the wealthy elite. Sanjar Umarov is an archetypal example of such ‘New losers’.

Umarov had studied business administration in Tennessee on a US government scholarship. His trading interests had widened from their Uzbek base. He has a home in Memphis, and a green card. His children are US citizens. Among the Uzbek elite, a class had come into existence of people who could do business with the West. Their business was now being cut off by Karimov.

It would be wrong to credit Sanjar Umarov with purely selfish motives. Unlike so many of his countrymen, he has the education and experience to understand that Karimov’s policies are economically disastrous. Over dinner, we shared our frustration over this: Uzbekistan is not a naturally poor country. It is extremely well endowed with gas, gold, uranium, iron, coal and most rare minerals you can think of. It is historically fertile and could be so again once the government-dictated cotton monoculture is abandoned.

Uzbekistan’s plight is inflicted on it by appalling government. Umarov and I both believe it could recover surprisingly quickly once basic economic freedoms are established, of which the first must be to take the land from the state and give it to the peasant farmers. Over dinner we discussed other ideas, such as voucher privatisation schemes to enable the common people to benefit from Uzbekistan’s mineral wealth. I found Umarov attentive, interested and pro-active.

The outlawed Uzbek opposition has been fractured. There are genuine, historical differences between the Erk and Birlik parties, and those differences are vital to a democracy. But, until we achieve democracy, people need to work together against Karimov. The parties had moved to do that, to their great credit, but there was understandable resentment and suspicion from those who had suffered in opposition for years, towards a ‘Johnny Come Lately’ like Sanjar Umarov.

Well, he is certainly suffering now in his Tashkent cell. And, if Karimov is to be overthrown, in practice some reform-minded ‘insiders’ are going to be needed to build the necessary national unity for reconstruction. That has to be faced. There are several prominent Uzbek opposition leaders, and Umarov now joins such figures as Mohammed Salih, Abdurahim Polat and others. One day let us hope the Uzbek people will freely choose between their politicians. For now, personal ambition needs to be subordinated to the need to end Karimov’s reign of terror.

The urgent need now is for all the opposition parties, including the Sunshine Coalition, to agree a platform of basic reform in the economy, the constitution, the police and judiciary, agriculture, education and many other areas. The broad lines of change need to be ready to roll out once Karimov goes. The most useful thing donors and foreign NGOs could do now would be to set up a programme outside Uzbekistan working with all parties to agree a plan of basic reform.

I found Umarov engaging and enthusiastic. I urged him to be cautious about returning to Uzbekistan, and was rather puzzled by his apparent confidence that he could pursue his political aims inside Uzbekistan without personal danger. Plainly he had good contacts with US official circles ‘ since Karimov turned against the US, a pro-Western oligarch is a saleable commodity in Washington.

That Umarov was arrested at the time of the visit of Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov to Tashkent is a sign of the strength and ugliness of the current Uzbek/Russian relationship. Umarov is being kept in solitary confinement. Nodira Khidatoyova of his party claims to have been told by an inside source that the Prokurator’s office have been instructed to destroy his mind through psychotropic drugs.

That is certainly feasible. There have been many examples of prisoners being forcibly injected, and Elena Urlaeva, another dissident I know, is currently undergoing such ‘treatment’ in a psychiatric institution. Sanjar Umarov’s lawyer seems to provide some evidence for this. He found him naked, in solitary confinement, making repetitive movements and unable to communicate coherently.

The response of the international community to the brutal treatment of an opposition leader has been pathetic, as always with Uzbekistan. The UK, as EU Presidency, issued a pious statement hoping that ‘International norms of treatment would be respected’, when plainly they are not being.

Umarov is now being charged with ’embezzlement’, and the UK hopes these charges will be ‘properly investigated’. How stupidly, utterly, inadequate! There is no ‘proper’ investigation procedure in Uzbekistan, where 99% of those tried are convicted, and dissidents are framed literally every day, usually with narcotics or firearms offences. To pretend there is a shred of legitimacy to this treatment of Sanjar Umarov is a nonsense. Why is an alleged embezzler naked in solitary confinement?

If corruption is the real concern of the Uzbek authorities, Karimov and his daughter would be the first arrested. The international community, and the UK in particular, needs a much tougher response before Umarov dies in jail.

Craig Murray

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Hazel Blears responds to Craig Murray’s charge that she made false claims to Parliament

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From The Guardian:

Craig Murray makes a number of accusations about me (Hazel Blears made a claim I know to be false, October 19) over the decision to proscribe the Islamic Jihad Union. Readers will understand why I cannot provide full details of all the intelligence available on the IJU or the nature of intelligence operations in central Asia. What I can say is that the home secretary had the full intelligence picture, as presented by UK intelligence agencies, available to him when he took the decision to recommend that the IJU should be proscribed. The decision to proscribe the IJU – and 14 other organisations – was endorsed by both houses of parliament last week with not one member of either house voting against the order.

To assist parliament in coming to a decision, we provided a brief account of the activities of the IJU, including that in July 2004 an IJU cell mounted suicide attacks against the US and Israeli embassies in Tashkent. These attacks were condemned by the UN secretary general. The IJU has claimed responsibility for a number of terrorist crimes. The IJU is proscribed by the UN and I believe there was a clear case for the UK to take similar action.

Hazel Blears MP

Home Office minister

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MPs debate the Terrorism Bill – be careful what you say!

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Below we post two excerpts from the parliamentary debate on the second reading of the proposed terrorism bill that took place on the 26th October. First, Alan Simpson, Labour MP for Nottingham South, raises the example of what would transpire if MPs questioned the evidence on a proscribed terrorist organisation. Secondly, John Denham describes how someone vandalising a statute of the President of Uzbekistan could be guilty of terrorism under the proposed UK legislation!

For the full Hansards transcript go here

Alan Simpson: The hon. Gentleman will recall the debate in the House two weeks ago about the extension of the list of proscribed organisations. Included on that list was the Islamic Jihad Union in Uzbekistan. Many Members raised concerns about the inclusion of that organisation and, a matter of days later, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan wrote in The Guardian that there was no basis for substantiating the allegations that had been made about it, that they had come from the Uzbek Government and that we had no embedded intelligence sources of our own in the region. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the provisions relating to encouragement in the Bill would place hon. Members in an invidious position, in that, if we sought to defend an organisation that had been improperly proscribed as a terrorist organisation, we would be committing a terrorist offence under the encouragement provisions?

Mr. Denham : I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who makes a powerful case for legislation to deal with the terrorist threat that we face, but does he not acknowledge that this legislation goes far wider than that? It is a question not of someone in this country supporting an action taken somewhere else in the world, but of anyone anywhere in the world supporting any type of violence. If an Uzbek living in Uzbekistan supported the destruction of a statue as a symbol of opposition to the tyrannical regime in his country, he would be guilty of an offence under clause 17, and liable to prosecution and seven years’ imprisonment, should he come to this country. Is it really our intention to do the dirty work for some of the most oppressive and tyrannical regimes in the world?

Mr. Clarke: As my right hon. Friend knows, it is not our intention to do anybody’s dirty work; rather, we intend to do our best to protect this country’and, indeed, the world’against terrorism as a means of political change. All our constituents will want us to do that as best we can. That said, I concede, as I have to my right hon. Friend privately and in his Committee, that we have to look at these definitions in order to avoid such questions arising. I say again’

Finally, a quote from Charles Clarke on the proposed offence of the glorification of terrorism:

The encouragement offence also includes glorification, which was a manifesto commitment. After we published our initial proposals, it was clear that there was considerable unease about the proposal for a self-contained offence of glorification of terrorism. In the spirit of consensus, we have now responded to that concern. Accordingly, glorification is now an offence only if the person who glorifies terrorism believes, or has reasonable grounds for believing, that the remarks will be understood as an incitement to terrorist acts.

Ok, thats incredibly clear and not at all prone to misinterpretation or abuse. Nice work Mr Clarke.

Further, in summing up at the end of the debate, Hazel Blears simply ignored Simpson’s point from above completely. The government made no attempt in the debate to reply to Craig Murray’s point about the fake nature of the so-called March 2004 suicide bombings.

See above for Blear’s response to the criticism from Murray, which she issued in the press.

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