Daily archives: May 1, 2006

Petition to free Malcolm Kendall-Smith

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Flight Lieutenant Dr Malcolm Kendall-Smith – an officer in the Royal Air Force who refused to follow orders to serve in Basra (and thus kill innocent Iraqi nationals) in the UK’s attack & invasion of Iraq on the grounds of their patent illegality, was recently found guilty and sentenced to several months imprisonment.

You may already be aware, but an organisation called Military Families Against the War have started a petition, which you can sign online, condemning his sentence, its grounds and demanding his immediate release. It can be found here:

http://www.petitiononline.com/MKSApril/petition.html

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Speaking the unspeakable: Craig Murray on University speaking tour in the US

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Following his appearance at the Europena Parliament enquiry (see previous posts), Craig is now on a speaking tour in the US.

On the April 26 he spoke at Harvard University Law School as part of a program endorsed by Harvard Law Students for Peace & HLS NLG Student Chapter and then moved on to to Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the 27th.

On May 3rd he is due to speak at UC Berkeley, followed by Stanford University on the 4th, UCSC on the 5th, Sonoma State University of California on the 6th and University of Chicago/Northwestern University on the 9th.

For further details of the National Campus Speaking Tour and other speakers see Speaking the Unspeakable

More on the event at UCSC is given below.

From UC Santa Cruz Currents

Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, will speak on U.S. and British sanctioned torture in Uzbekistan prisons on Friday, May 5, from noon to 2 p.m. at the Stevenson College Fireside Lounge. Admission is free and open to the public.

Craig Murray served as British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004.

Murray was fired after he released classified documents affirming the existence of torture and U.S. and British complicity in it. Last fall, he was a key witness at the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity by the Bush Administration held in New York City.

UCSC psychology professor Craig Haney, an authority on U.S. prisons, the death penalty, and torture, will comment on Ambassador Murray’s presentation. An open discussion will follow. The event will be moderated by feminist studies professor Bettina Aptheker.

For more information on Murray, go to www.democracynow.org for the text of an interview with Amy Goodman on January 16, 2006. This event is sponsored by Faculty Against War, Cultural Studies, the Institute for Advanced Feminist Research, and the Santa Cruz County Chapter of the ACLU.

And for another view on this forthcoming event go here

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UK fights to safeguard immunity of officials accused of torturing Britons

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From The Guardian (17.04.06)

The government will argue in Britain’s highest court next week that foreign officials who commit torture abroad should be immune from civil action in the English courts.

Christopher Greenwood QC, the international lawyer who advised the attorney-general that the Iraq war was lawful, will argue for the British government, which has intervened in support of Saudi Arabian officials accused of detaining and torturing four Britons in Saudi jails.

Saudi Arabia is appealing to the House of Lords against a court of appeal ruling that, while the state is immune from compensation claims for torture, individual officials who inflict it are not. Civil rights lawyers said the ruling in October 2004 was a historic victory, ending immunity for torturers abroad from claims in the English courts.

(more…)

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