Daily archives: February 10, 2006

Craig Murray’s “Murder In Samarkand” available for pre-order now on Amazon

 in The Book / Uzbekistan by | View Comments

Click to order the book from Amazon

Craig Murray was the United Kingdom’s Ambassador to Uzbekistan until he was removed from his post in October 2004 after exposing appalling human rights abuses by the US-funded regime of President Islam Karimov. In this candid and at times shocking memoir, he lays bare the dark and dirty underside of the War on Terror. In Uzbekistan, the land of Alexander the Great and Tamburlaine, lurks one of the most hideous tyrannies on earth – one founded on cotton slavery and brutal torture. As neighbouring ‘liberated’ Afghanistan produces record levels of heroin, the Uzbek rulers cash in on massive trafficking. They are even involved in trafficking their own women to prostitution in the West. But this did not prevent Karimov being viewed as a key US ally in the War on Terror. When Craig Murray arrived in Uzbekistan, he was a young Ambassador with a brilliant career and a taste for whisky and women. But after hearing accounts of dissident prisoners being boiled to death and innocent people being raped and murdered by agents of the state, he started to question both his role and that of his country in so-called ‘democratising’ states. When Murray decided to go public with his shocking findings, Washington and 10 Downing Street reached the conclusion that he had to go. But Uzbekistan had changed the high-living diplomat and there was no way he was going to go quietly.

Pre-order “Murder In Samarkand” from www.amazon.com

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ACLU call for release of torture documents by the Bush administration

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From American Civil Liberties Union

The American Civil Liberties Union have urged the House International Relations Committee to adopt three resolutions of inquiry directing the Bush administration to provide all documents on the development and implementation of its torture and extraordinary rendition policies.

“America cannot hold itself as a moral beacon to the world if we violate the rule of law by engaging in torture and extraordinary rendition,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “The federal government should not be kidnapping people and sending them to countries that engage in torture. These resolutions will shine a bright light into a dark hole by requiring the federal government to disclose its activities to Congress.”

For the full press release go here

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