You will note that this morning’s piece on Afghanistan was posted at 4am. That is because I was awoken by what sounded like somebody rattling the back door. There was however nothing to be seen.
Then at 10.22pm this evening, Nadira received a phone call on her mobile from a witheld number. A heavily accented man asked “if her husband was the writer”. She asked who it was, and he gave his name as Osman. She noticed that another man was whispering, telling the first man what to reply.
“Osman” then started asking repeatedly “Is your husband at home?” Nadira said that I did not take phone calls from people at that time of night, and suggested that “Osman” should email. “Osman” said that I was going to write something for him, and again started asking if I was at home. Nadira told him to email, and he then started swearing and repeating “Your husband owes us £30,000”.
This is all very disconcerting. I don’t know any “Osman”, and to the best of my knowledge neither I not any organisation with which I am connected has any outstanding debts to anybody. Why phone so late of night, who was “Osman” and who was the man whispering his instructions? Most disconcerting of all, why phone Nadira and where did he get her number?
If I did not have a family I would laugh this off, but the approach to Nadira and the questioning of whether I am at home is alarming. Probably that is the object of the exercise.
I fully agree with Suhayl Saadi, who makes all the points I would wish to make but more eloquently.
This is no prank.
What does Stuart say ??
Thanks, Monty. And Craig, please get some sleep, if you can. You are not alone; we and many others are behind you and we know your courage from your books, your work and your actions. I am sure that many people in this country and elsewhere really apprecite what you have done and are doing. We are legion.
‘They’ (assuming there is a ‘they’; by this I also refer to the various legal firms and their clients with whom you have tussled in recent years) should know this and they should never be permitted to forget it. We have a very bright spotlight and we are watching them, round the clock.
Are you sure it wasn’t the inland revenue?
Craig sorry to hear this has happened. Tell the police so that there is a record of the event. It doesnt matter if there is not enough for them to act on at the moment. Start the proccess anyway.
Really nasty people rarely ring you up before doing something horrid, so I wouldnt worry to much.
Probably just some idiot with to much time on his hands. As to obtaining mobile numbers….. its really not that hard to do.
Keep your doors and windows locked when you are in bed or out of the house.
Or you could ask MI5 who called you cos you can bet your life they listen in on all your conversations !
The point is the professional people make it look like non-professional. It is definitely a hand of professional organization/s. Sickening, but it is reality. Respect to you Mr Murray for being honest and truthful and speaking up for those who are oppressed and tortured.
Btw would certainly tell the police. But who hasn’t had dodgy phone clicks/strange late night visits/mysterious calls/peculiar people prowling? Almost insulting if you don’t : )
Btw (2) wasn’t the person who brought up the idea of the ‘Osman warning’ also the person who was on the Telegraph blog asking for ammo against posters here (over nuclear power, if I remember rightly)? Apologies if not.
So how did they get Nadira’s phone number? Simples. Possibly some chancer going through your bins looking for personal details who stumbled across an old mobile phone bill with her number on it. Probably a fox from what I read of modern day life in London…
Craig you silly sausage, why ask question for answer you already know.
Everybody and his uncle has access to your mobile number and your address, because you past it on your website enough times.
So if anybody wanted to contact you, they would simply phone you, or visit you. especially if it concerned £30 000.
What someone is trying to do is what they succeeded in doing. And that is scaring you, and diverting your attention from your causes to this rubbish.
It isn’t British intelligence because they are experienced enough in this stuff to do it properly without the handler being overheard.
My bet is a Zionist Organisation, maybe JDL, considering the timing and the people who have currently flooded your page with bollocks.
They have a history of fucking things up, because they are not very smart.
If they phone again keep checking for caller ID, sooner or later they will forget to put that number in front that hides it, that is the type of people they are.
“and, personally speaking, on the subject of a little sideswipe I noticed in the comments, one thing I don’t like to believe, don’t want to believe, don’t yearn to believe, is that the bin Laden and Bush families were business partners”
I didn’t realize I had referred to you personally. The point I was making was that there clearly are a number of people who want to believe a lot of weird fantasies. If you don’t then, fine, you can strike yourself from the list.
My own advice to Mr. Murray is to NOT be complacent about this. I think it COULD be just some idiot who reads his blog or it COULD (and I put this at a very low probability) be someone working in what they perceive as the interests of a particular state.
I could go further with my advice in saying that you shouldn’t post your address and contact details on the Internet. If you take one look at the comments on any You Tube video about Israel/Palestine you’ll find that there are some really incredibly deranged people out there (ON BOTH “SIDES”).
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that some of these idiots will behave in a threatening manner and it absolutely does not have to be state-sanctioned for them to do it.
The reason why I used the words “want to believe” or “yearn to believe” is that there are some very silly people out there who want to believe that they have discovered the way the world works and think that every thing fits a very neat narrative when the chances are that life is far more haphazard, absurd and meaningless than that.
People who talk about the “timing” of it are being silly. Craig Murray has been speaking out against the atrocious regime in Uzbekistan for a number of years now (for which I applaud him!) He has been speaking out against “Zionism” for a number of years now also. There is NO “timing” issue at all.
technicolour at June 11, 2010 10:14 AM
Yes, and your point is?
@ scousebilly: just wondering
@ arsalan: hello! I keep hearing about the JDL. Must look them up. What do you know about them?
@ arsalan: OK, just did. Good old wiki. Crikey. The BNP in yarmulkas?
“I keep hearing about the JDL. Must look them up. What do you know about them?”
The Jewish Defence League is an organization that is banned in Israel and America as an extremist/terrorist organization. In other words, they are evil motherfuckers.
Of course, Hamas and Hizbollah are (in the eyes of the witless Left) heroes and freedom fighters. In other words, recipients of a double standard.
Craig,
whoever gave you the advice that there isn’t enough for the Police to go on is wrong. You believe someone tried your door and then received a phone call as you described. You are a high profile ‘celebrity’ deeply critical of the Middle Eastern conflict therefore you are entitled to extra attention from the Police. If nothing else your local uniformed officers should be aware of the events.
If you have called the Police and they weren’t interested don’t let it lie. find the name of the Officer In Charge and write to him detailing the circumstances, your former and current status and why you believe there may be cause for concern, send the letter recorded delivery. If you don’t get a satisfactory response contact your local MP.
Don’t waste you’re time and money with CCTV systems; unless they are installed, maintained and monitored under certain conditions they would be unlikely to be of any use as evidence and anyone with any nefarious intentions will circumvent them easily.
Contact your cellphone provider by letter and let them know the circumstances.
The Police have a duty to help you, if you don’t want to do it, let me know, I will. The point is, if you jump all over this just now and not just hope it goes away then if anything else does happen there will be an official reaction which, if anyone is up to something, they will see (a visit from the Police, diverted phone calls etc. etc.) which will deter them.
PS
Both you’re landline telephone and cellphone service provider have the facility to block witheld numbers, you may be able to access the cellphone facility from the cellphone handset.
You will be entitled to a visit from the Local Crime Prevention Officer (if there is still such a thing) who can check your house/flat for security weaknesses and advise on what to do about them. Give the Police Office a call and ask for them.
Sinister.
The JDL are “banned” only on paper in the US and Israel. They still fully function. In the UK and Canada they are not even banned. For example in Canada they called for and succeeded in getting George Galloway banned from entering the country.
I have had run ins with the bastards, the police don’t dare go near them because all they need to do is shout antisemitism a few times to scare them away.
That’s why I told Craig to check each time they phone, because they have a tendency to do silly things like forget to block caller ID. Because it doesn’t matter if they do forgot. What is going to happen if they are identified and Craig calls the police?
1: The police will state, it is none of our business, contact your phone company.
2: The police will say, we will look in to it, and do nothing of the such.
3: The police will state that they did look in to it, but lost the notes.
4: the police will contact the JDL, the JDL will say antisemitism a few times to make the police go away.
So there is no reason for the JDL, to disguise what they do, so they will make silly mistakes that will identify them.
It happened to someone I know. His mother’s house was next to a Rabbinical school. The Rabbi who ran the school wanted her house to extend the school. So he sent the school boys to break in to her house and threaten her.
They did this everyday for two and a half years. The police refused to investigate. She installed CCTV at her own expense and gave the videos to the police, and each and every time the police claimed they lost the video tapes.
The press refused to report on it because they feared being called anti Semites. This ended when Islam Channel reported on it, causing such a large amounts of complaints to the local police station that their switch board was knocked out. And then Channel four reported on it. Then the police paid some of the boys a visit, making sure not to arrest them, so as to allow them to relocate to Israel. Nothing was ever done to the Rabbi. And nothing can be done to the boys they choose as scapegoats because the ones they choose were the ones who now live in Israel
This didn’t happen in Israel, it happened right here in London.
They are above the law, they know it we know it.
Arsalan,
calm down, don’t make a mountain out of a molehill making this into something its not.
The fact is NOTHING will be done if Craig doesn’t go through the motions, as futile as you believe them to be.
I found an article reporting what happened.
I know more about the case than what the article lists because I know her son personally.
Police accused of ignoring threats from Jewish youths
By Elham Asaad Buaras
An elderly Muslim woman who says pupils from her neighbouring Orthodox Jewish boy’s private school subjected her to a relentless two-year ordeal of verbal physical threat, has lambasted the Stoke Newington Police for “ignoring her complaints in fear of upsetting the Jewish offenders.”
Speaking to The Muslim News, Mariam Hafesji, who is single and in her 60s, says she was left “exhausted by Stoke Newington police” refusal to take her complaints seriously. Hafesji, a practising Muslim, and wears the hijab, said she had lived in her house in Bethune Road, Stamford Hill, London, for the past 22 years, but for the past two years, “I have become a prisoner in my own home. I can’t go outside the garden in the summer, I can’t open the windows. I had to endure verbal abuse and physical threat inside and outside of my home. There is 6 meters separating me from the school. When I leave the house I have to hear “Pakis” chants and “Palestine we will kill you.”
After three attempts to contact the school, where Hafesji said, “the door was slammed in my face rudely,” she was left with no choice but to get in contact with the police.
“I contacted the police on May 9, 2002, when the abuse became severe and more threatening. Two white ladies who were passing-by actually witnessed the harassment. Both ladies waited with me for the police to arrive.”
Despite having two independent witnesses to collaborate her version of events, Hafesji says the police “completely ignored me. They did not even try to take my statement or of the two ladies.”
However, the family says that over the two years of repeated calls, meetings with the police, independent witnesses, video evidence of criminal damage and harassment, the police refused to open a criminal investigation and each time the family approached the police, it was dismissed as a “civil dispute”.
Hafesji’s family were left to provide the evidence themselves when the police refused to install CCTV camera for “logistical reasons”. With the help of her son, she managed to capture images of the threats and taunts on her with her own hand held camcorder camera. The disturbing images reveal a group of boys, all wearing their black uniforms, gathering next to her gate and whilst making sounds, in one disturbing picture, one of the boys is captured making a hand to throat gesture.
When Hafesji family eventually lodged a complaint to the police, they were told they had lost the complaint. When the family asked why the complaint was “lost”, the police never replied.
Police negligence has led the family to believe Islampohobia had a part to play in the way their complaints were handled. “Can you imagine for a second what would happen if the roles were reversed – if it was Muslim youths harassing a Jewish lady living on her own? I tell you what would have happened. They (the police) would have solved the problem there and then.”
The family say their attempts to stop the terror through community mediation, repeated attempts to do this with the school, met with silence.
Hafesji’s son, Shahid Achhala told The Muslim News, “Previous to this case both communities had enjoyed excellent community relations for the last three decades resolving any issues through grass root level mediation. Whilst one can only speculate why the police were negligent in their duty of care, this case has highlighted anti-Muslim prejudice, in the UK. This is institutionalised and attacks on the community are sanctioned at the highest level.”
Hafesji said, “If this had been a secular private British school embarking on a campaign of hate, terror and criminal damage against a white elderly neighbour, there would be an inquiry into how the school was being run, there would also be calls for the resignation of the school’s board as well as the launch of a criminal investigation.”
Founding member of a local organisation, Muslim Jewish Forum, Ismail Amaan, said, “Members of the Jewish community that favour peaceful relations with their Muslim neighbours in Stamford Hill have made genuine attempts to intervene in this case, and have privately condemned the actions of the school. However, the rogue elements continued their orchestrated campaign of intimidation against Mrs Hafesji, and we had no option but to advise her and her family to seek redress through the police.
“The biggest disappointment in this case has been the failure of the police to take action and to treat the case as a serious hate crime, therefore implicitly allowing the intimidation to continue. The actions of one private Jewish school has the potential to really upset the good relations between Muslims and Jews in the area that have been established, and this is my greatest fear.”
The family are keen to point out that the fault does not lie with the Jewish community but on the police’s failure to serve and protect communities regardless of faith, race and class.
Talmud Tohra School denied its pupils were involved. The school’s Principal, Rabbi Rottenburgh insisted to The Muslim News that “my school has nothing to do with the dispute.”
Spokesperson for Hackney Police told The Muslim News, “Officers from the Community Safety Unit, Hackney Borough Police, are carrying out an investigation following reports from a local resident that she is being racially harassed by youths from a nearby school. As part of the investigation a number of youths have been arrested and inquiries continue. A complaint against police has been lodged and is being investigated. The school assisted in identifying the suspects after attempts were made to involve the school over a period of time.”
Despite the police’s reassurance that an investigation is underway, Hafesji remains critical of any chance convictions “I feel like nothing is going to be done, I have no confidence in the police now,” said Hafesji.
“Despite the police’s reassurance that an investigation is underway, Hafesji remains critical of any chance convictions “I feel like nothing is going to be done, I have no confidence in the police now,” said Hafesji”
She was right, because nothing was done. After consistently claiming that none of the boys from the school were involved. The Rabbi choose boys who were about to move to Israel as the scape goats. “Oh yes, I was lying about no one from my school being involved, it was these ones, the ones you can’t touch because they are in Israel now, hahahahahaha, bloody paki!”
I agree, angrysoba, that Craig has been consistently critical of Israeli policies for some time. That occured to me as well when I wrot the post.
However, firstly, there is always a ‘first time’ wrt potential persecution – it has to start sometime, and secondly, the global criticism which Israel has had (albeit much of it likely to be simply rhetorical) over the flotilla killings has been greater and more uniquitous, I sense, than over previous incidents (except perhaps sabra and Chatilla; even the attack on Lebanon in 2006 did not garner quite so much negative publicity, as it was ostensibly directed against Hizbollah) – and more difficult for Israel to defend in the media. One just has to look at the poor quality of such attempted defencs in the press and on this website to see that.
So, I think that this has been a real own-goal for Israel in publicity terms. The leaders of that country may not care about that, but those who support Israeli policies to the irrational hilt (i.e. regardless of whether or not they are productive for Israel) and who mediate such discourses in the world of infomation, I think would regard it as annoying and negative that a relatively high-profile, well-connected, ex-‘Establishment’, anti-torture, etc., figure such as Craig has weighed-in strongly and directly against Israeli state policies in general and the flotilla killings in particular at this specific time.
Of course, to date, there is absolutely no evidence that it was someone connected with this dynamic. It may simply have been pranksters – sub-Russell Brand (if it’s possible to be sub-Russell Brand!). There are also enough among other groups which Craig has critiqued who may have decided to play around at this point.
So, as always, best to keep an open mind and as you – and also I think Redders – quite rightly suggest, not be complacent about it but take appropriate advice and sensible, proportionate precautions.
Arsalan,
no one doubted this happened but this is not Craig’s circumstances and reciting the circumstances to highlight either Police incompetence or Jewish bigotry is unnecessary.
The fact is the Police don’t want to get involved in anything that is not a detectable crime any longer. If you want to understand why Google ‘Inspector Gadget’ and visit his blog, you will find all the information you need there.
Arsalan: The uk police act for the interests of others, they do not serve the people. Professional ethics went out the door many years ago.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/10290456.stm
A law unto themselves.
Must say that I’d have been onto the local copshop, and wouldnt have taken no for an answer. Precautions, Craig.
technicolour at June 11, 2010 11:39 AM
Yes, your memory is working ok 😉
The Telegraph site is actually a blog that is anti Global Warming. Many there are, in fact, “green” in the conservation and anti-pollution sense but don’t buy the greenhouse theory. Funnily enough the Bilderbergs themselves seem to know what a crock the old Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis was:
Bilderberg Meetings discuss GLOBAL COOLING!!!
The 58th Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Sitges, Spain 3 ?” 6 June 2010. The Conference will deal mainly with Financial Reform, Security, Cyber Technology, Energy, Pakistan, Afghanistan, World Food Problem, Global Cooling, Social Networking, Medical Science, EU-US relations. Approximately 130 participants will attend of whom about two-thirds come from Europe and the balance from North America. About one-third is from government and politics, and two-thirds are from finance, industry, labor, education, and communications. The meeting is private in order to encourage frank and open discussion.
http://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/meeting2010.html
You couldn’t make this stuff up…
Once again you scour the popular media this site invariable debunks, and attempt to discredit someone or something for nothing more than your own selfish satisfaction.
Craig’s situation bears absolutely no relationship to this case which, apart from anything else, took place in 2008.
@ScouseBilly
Ahem……wrong thread?
And so say’s ex PC Redders.