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
Stop digging, Hazel! The first rule of lying is not to draw further attention to the "untruth" once you've been rumbled.
1. "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."
(Yes indeed – readers understand perfectly well that, just like the government's evidence on Iraqi WMD, what little "intelligence" Hazel has on the IJU is a fairy-tale extracted under torture by our friends in the Uzbek secret police.)
2. "The decision to proscribe the IJU – and 14 other organisations – was endorsed by both houses of parliament last week" (after Hazel Blears lied to them about the nature, and in some cases the existence, of the organisations that they were banning)
3. "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."
(without mentioning:
a) that the British Ambassador in Tashkent at the time had personally witnessed the aftermath of the alleged attacks and concluded that they were a stunt staged by the Uzbek government – and that IJU probably didn't even exist
b) that he had passed this information onto the British government
c) that the British intelligence services had agreed with his conclusions)
4. "These attacks were condemned by the UN secretary general." (in the same way that he condemns all alleged incidents of terrorism)
5. "The IJU has claimed responsibility for a number of terrorist crimes." (at least one person, somewhere in the world, has claimed that the IJU exists, claimed that they are a member of the IJU, and claimed that the IJU has carried out a number of terrorist crimes, not including the Tashkent attacks.)
6. "The IJU is proscribed by the UN and I believe there was a clear case for the UK to take similar action." (the UN gets much of its information from member governments, including the British and American governments – both of whom have a strategic interest in distorting the truth about terrorism in Uzbekistan)
The usual gloss and spin from Ms Blears who fails to address the key criticisms.