UPDATE I today received a prison sentence of eight months for my reporting of the defence case in the Alex Salmond trial. I have a three week stay while we apply to this same court for permission to appeal to the Supreme Court. My appeal will be based on the simple fact that I did not identify anybody. It will also be based on the right to report the defence case being denied by an extraordinary, impossibly strict application of “jigsaw identification”, and on fair process not having been observed.
Should this court refuse permission to appeal, which seems not unlikely, I will in all probability be jailed while we apply direct to the Supreme Court for permission, which will take some months.
I am afraid I find myself once again obliged to ask you for funding for the appeal. We have raised about £70,000 but are likely to need, at the least, double that.
UPDATE The defence fund has received £46,520 in the 24 hours since it was relaunched to fund the appeal to the Supreme Court. That does not get us there, but it is a good start on our way as the appeal continues. Over 2,000 people have donated, with the smallest donation being 82p and the largest £1,000. Every penny is greatly appreciated. I should make plain that despite the astronomical costs, some members of our legal team have been working substantially below their normal rates and with time donated free.
One donation of £500 from a gentleman I know, came with a note that explained that Willie MacRae had lent him £100 shortly before his highly suspect death. He regarded the £500 as repaying that debt, and was sure Willie would approve of the use of his money. That brought tears to my eyes.
UPDATE ENDS
On Friday I shall be sentenced, very possibly to prison, for contempt of court by “jigsaw identification”. While I do not believe anybody has ever been imprisoned for “jigsaw identification” before, my entire prosecution has been so perverse that I cannot imagine why they have done it unless that is the intention.
With enormous diffidence and frankly embarrassment, I find myself yet again obliged to ask people to contribute towards my defence fund before my hearing next Friday, to enable us to move forward with an appeal to the Supreme Court. Legal bills actually paid to date amount to £161,000, with about eight thousand not billed yet. Non-legal costs, including the opinion poll, total around £9,000. The total raised by the defence fund to date is around £143,000 with the balance of around £18,000 paid so far having come from my personal pocket.
The practical result of the judgement against me is that it is virtually impossible to report the defence in any sexual allegation case; as witness the fact that I was ordered by the court to take down every single word of my articles covering the defence case and evidence.
The judges ruled that publishing any information that could theoretically assist not the public, but literally a colleague who worked in the same office, to identify a complainant, would constitute jigsaw identification. They also ruled that jigsaw identification was committed if you gave a piece of information which could identify a complainant in conjunction with information that could be found anywhere else, no matter how obscure. For example, if information from page 19 of the Inverurie Herald six years ago, combined with information from page 178 of a book, combined with something I published could lead to an identification, I am guilty regardless of whether or not anybody did in practice actually piece together these obscure sources of information.
In fact the court heard nothing that would pass as evidence in court that any individual had in fact identified anybody as a result of my articles. There was zero evidence of harm. What has been harmful is the gross censorship of my journalism, with my entire daily account of the defence case removed, and my critique of the Garavelli article removed. In consequence, it is once again virtually impossible for anybody to discover WHY Alex Salmond was acquitted, enabling the massive state and media led campaign to claim he was really guilty – which sadly appears, with the counter-narrative banned, to have acquired great traction.
You will recall that I commissioned a Panelbase opinion poll which proved that a significant 8% of the Scottish population – that is around 400,000 adults – believed they had been able to identify one or more of the complainants in the Salmond case from publication, but when asked stated that the source of this caption was overwhelmingly the mainstream media.
Well I decided to re-run the opinion poll to see if anything had changed. These were the results. 11% of the Scottish adult population – that is half a million adults – by now believe they know an identity. This is how they know:
It is perfectly clear and entirely consistent with the first poll. 54% of people who believe they know an identity got their information from the newspapers. 27% got it from TV and radio (there may be overlap between these groups).
Yet no newspaper or TV journalist or editor is being prosecuted.
Not even Dani Garavelli, who is overwhelmingly named as the source of information – by fifteen different people – is being prosecuted.
So let us be perfectly clear. The three top sources named for identification were
Dani Garavelli – by a country mile
Kirsty Wark
BBC
None of whom is being prosecuted. Garavelli has published an entire series of major articles amplifying the prosecution case against Salmond, in Tortoise media, twice in Scotland on Sunday and in the London Review of Books, plus many other well paid commissions. She has effectively made a fat living out of an entirely one-sided account that claims miscarriage of justice simply by omitting all the defence evidence. In so doing she has plainly been much more credibly guilty of jigsaw identification than I. On the other hand, my long critique of Garavelli’s first Scotland on Sunday article, which interpolated the defence evidence which contradicted her account and proved that the jury was right, has now been banned, censored and desroyed by the court, the 21st century equivalent of burning the manuscript in the public square.
Garavelli has gone on to become media-puppet-in-chief to the Scottish government, producing a stream of adulatory articles about Nicola Sturgeon like this one about what a great constituency MSP Sturgeon is, which is (ahem) somewhat contrary to received wisdom.
Garavelli is protected because she is part of the inner circle, while I am prosecuted, when the mainstream media is not, because I am an opponent of the corrupt nexus of power that governs Scotland today. The official line is that through enthusiasm for Salmond’s cause I revealed information to the public that the mainstream media did not. That is a fiction the Scottish legal system has chosen to adopt, and for which I will be sentenced on Friday.
All the real world evidence shows that is untrue. I revealed far less than the mainstream media revealed. This is a shameless and openly political prosecution of one of the very few platforms of any size which explained the truth about why Alex Salmond was acquitted by the jury. That is my “crime”.
We have to get this out of the foetid corruption of Edinburgh and into Strasbourg. That is only possible via the UK Supreme Court, and my legal team are now working on that appeal. I urge you to subscribe not only because of the particular injustice of my own case, but also because this ruling puts a huge power in the hands of the state by making it next to impossible to report the defence in cases of sexual allegation. As such allegations are the favoured tool of the state against perceived dissident threats (cf Julian Assange), this is very dangerous indeed.
You can contribute to my defence fund here. I am extremely grateful to those who have and I want to stress that I absolutely do not want anybody to contribute if it causes them even the slightest financial difficulty. I am afraid to say that the amounts we need to raise remain ridiculous; this fact is of course all part of the implementation of suppression, by “lawfare”.
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Should you end up in jail, you may find useful reading there Indres Naidoo’s Island in Chains (an ANC prisoner who spent 10 years on Robben Island), as HMP Edinburgh will likely seem mild by comparison.
There is also a book by a Dutch evangelical that contain an account of her prison experience, that may be useful: Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place (about Ravensbruck concentration camp in WWII, where her sister perished).
Hopefully you won’t need them.
Into the Whirlwind by Evgenia Ginzburg and anything by Primo Levi are good additions to a prison library. For a change, Gore Vidal always brings a smile with his satires on the pretentious and corrupt. For something technical, Greg Baughen is writing a series on the strategic fatuity of the RAF 1914-now and has just published RAF at the Crossroads: The Second Front and Strategic Bombing Debate, 1942-1943 when the management had to face the music for leaving the army in the lurch in favour of a strategic bombing theory that failed before the war began.
The results of those opinion polls speak for themselves and would have been widely publicised in a country with honest journalists. Unfortunately ours take pride in travesties of justice, as evidenced by the ongoing rage that Alec Salmond wasn’t jailed for crimes he didn’t commit. Scottish journalism is a profession that reviles honest government and legal process, preferring them corrupt to the bone. What other conclusion can be drawn by this stage?
PayPal’s been daein’ ma nut in for two days now. Contribution made by olde fashioned bank transfer.
Also back from the (deserted) polling station. ALBA on the list, spoiled ballot in the constituency. SNP candidate seemed sensible enough but couldn’t bring myself to be seen to “approve” of Sturgeon’s Stasi state, even by inference.
Scots law has been made a complete ass of once more. It is a joke around the world and is not fit for purpose in my personal opinion which I think I am still allowed to have but these days maybe not. You will join Julian Assange on the right side of both the law and justice with those administering it locking themselves for all eternity on the wrong side of both. History will not remember these people with any fondness, I would not have them back again.
Craig, I’ve sent something cash wise.
We’ll know tomorrow whether the Scottish legal system wants to martyr you, or simply scare the underwear off you.
I do not believe our people want this kind of state suppression and may we rise and have the courage to challenge it.
With you in spirit, as are many folk across the world; you had the guts and courage to do things many of us couldn’t or wouldn’t and we proudly remain in your debt.
Good luck for tomorrow Craig.
O/T this is brilliant, the UK has all but destroyed its miniscule credibility due to the treatment of Julian Assange.
https://twitter.com/UgRwah/status/1389869751560769536
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists Azerbaijan had the biggest number of journalists imprisoned in Europe and is the 5th most censored country in the world, ahead of Iran and China. Some critical journalists have been arrested for their coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in Azerbaijan.
The words ‘pot’ and ‘kettle’ spring most readily to mind.
That’s the point he was making to the BBC! Was he supposed to accept that the fraud interviewing him cares about press freedom? He could also have referenced the case that is the subject of this blog.
???
IMO jigsaw identification is metaphor,very similar to the straw that broke camel’s bac
It make sense but is ridiculous at the same time. Was CM straw the last one or just in the middle?
Was CM puzzle piece in the corner that solved the whole Puzzle, or was it in the middle or at the end?
Ridiculous! What about other players?
Unless more people conspire to provide small details to reveal the secret it does’t make sense.
Even if that was the case it is
a)hard to prove
b) all should be accused
c) proved who delivered “lethal blow”
I am not legal expert but know what is right and just.
I am frustrated that such a silly case
a) someone can and in prison
b) it cost so much
c) to get justice or be defended you need so much money.
That is neither right or just! Someone is taking a piss!
d) I don’t subscribe but I did donate.
e) I wish you JUSTICE
Good wishes for tomorrow, Craig. Hopefully you will be back on your blog commenting about how it went. I’m sorry I can’t contribute anything to your defence fund at the moment but your case is important not just to you and your family personally but to journalism, its ability to flourish in this country and yes, to history too. Your reports are the ONLY detailed record of the Salmond case and they have been shut down. It is very important that in years to come the facts of the case are accessible to our grandchildren and theirs too. This isn’t hyperbole, without journalists like you reporting the full facts on cases like Salmond’s and Assange’s then the state gets to run roughshod over all of us whilst we’re none the wiser.
This is a terrible and unjust day for freedom of expression and democracy. And it will be even more unjust and terrible if Craig, the major whistleblower, is gaoled. This applies, regardless of what anyone might think specifically about Salmond/Sturgeon et al. Utterly shocking and disgraceful.
The very best of luck tomorrow Craig. Our wishes are with you and your family.
Craig
A few weeks ago I pledged £100 for your defence fund and just now I’ve sent it off.
I will be thinking of you and your family tomorrow. I am absolutely convinced from what I’ve read on this blog by yourself and others that you and your actions will be vindicated in the end. It’s not saying much, I realise, since the end could be a way off. I hope nevertheless that it is some small comfort in this shittiest of situations.
Since my last comment (this is only my 2nd, although been supporting for a while), I joined Alba. Becoming a member of a Scottish political party is a pretty weird thing for a 72 yr old Yorkshireman who is not even resident in Scotland to do, I realise, but Alba seems to be the only party in the fast disintegrating UK which is resolutely and consistently opposed to all that Westminster stands for.
Back in 2014 I was for Scotland remaining in the union. Today I see Scotland’s struggle for independence as part of England’s struggle to break free from what is essentially a racist colonialist constitutional one-party dictatorship. You have played an inspirational part in that conversion Craig, for which I thank you warmly.
I hope that, wherever you lay your head tomorrow, the Holyrood count over the coming days will give you further cause to be proud of your actions in defence of the truth.
All best wishes
Robert
Donation made. Good luck tomorrow Craig.
Let’s not forget the timing of the extraordinarily delayed verdict and sentencing.
CM is not only being attacked for a simple journalistic faux pas. It is about democracy and final casting off the centuries old imperial escapade. The MSM being fully minion’d to the task.
My latest here to appreciate CM’s wide ranging thorn in the siding.
I stand with Craig Murray
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/04/bypassing-the-road-block/comment-page-3/#comment-988266
Good luck Craig,
I hope things go your way tomorrow.
Kind regards, Neil Donaldson.
MacGregor Despite Them.
Best to you Craig Murray and to your family.
In due course think perhaps to Lesser Magistrates when only malign and targeted corrupt ‘justice’ faces you.
They embarrass and insult their office.
You and your family are in my thoughts and prayers. All the best for tomorrow. I have sent your entry on to all those I know with dosh. Hope that prompts some to come your way.
Best wishes from Good Old Germany with a small donation already sent via Paypal.
All the best for You and Your familiy!
Best of luck for Friday, I am hopeful you won’t get worse than a fine. The “offence” is clearly of a lower grade than the bloke who got 6 months because he thought he wasn’t subject to a court order if he was on holiday in Europe.
Hopefully with the establishment of the Alba party the political motivation behind the Salmond accusations have become a lot more obvious. I am wondering if the accuser name “leaked” to Geoff Aberdein was a transparent attempt at blackmail to convince Salmond to abandon any future political ambitions with an implicit promise if he did, the accusations would go away.
I should also add I couldn’t make head or tail of your “fan fiction”, only after your guilty verdict was I able to identify one name, since people have begun to refer to a certain politician as Marmalade (for reasons still obscure to me, I might add) – the Streisand effect.
It would be expensive and probably not worth your time, but there might be a possibility to get a ruling from the ECHR under Article 10: https://bit.ly/3hcIms3 (redirects to HUDOC)
Key issues would be whether your offence was truly foreseeable given other journalists were revealing far more information, whether it is compatible with a democratic society given the suspicion the allegations were being raised to strangle an electoral competitor at birth, and whether there is sufficient separation between political and prosecutorial arms in Scotland given the Lord Advocate sits in Cabinet.
Unfortunately you have to serve any sentence and exhaust all legal options in the UK before the ECHR will look at it
Sean Lamb
A free society should be able to cope with an element of publicity on first amendment US grounds, to guard against corporate or state corruption. It is outrageous that a corrupt media funded by Tories and a corrupt government in Scotland can hide behind “””privacy”” of individuals, however sensitive their circumstances.
The corrupt Tories and corrupt SNP will drastically harden opposition to thought crime if they start sending people to prison like criminals. A hardened resistance will turn into fighting for a free society, the virtues of which outweigh all other considerations.
In a free society justice has to be seen to be being done, which Humza Yousaf and Lord Wolffe plainly don’t understand, agree with, or wish to prevail in Scotland. Dog-whistle politics is disgusting at best and also incredibly dangerous.
Apart from all of that, Craig’s destiny has always been “interesting”, and he has had more destiny thrown at him than many of us would be able to cope with. So I am curious to see what galvanizing transformation today’s events work on this remarkable human being.
Good luck Craig. I will check again under the floor boards to see if any treasure remains.
Nicola Sturgeon’ dog-whistle feminist politics, I mean. Half the population of Scotland are male, and humiliating males just for being male is oppressive behaviour in an individual, and tyranny in a leader. I know that a higher court will.robustly overturn this feminist savagery supported by two male politicians who are clearly devoid of any conscience or moral wisdom. Viking hussy. I don’t know where the other two come from.
I understand it is no defence to say, if I’m guilty of this, then so are others. But instead, could one launch a private prosecution for contempt of court against Dani Garavelli et al? Seeing as the corrupt state has no intention of doing so.
If your case was heard together with theirs, it would expose the whole charade.
Squirrel
Difficult to prosecute a Tory , or global capitalist, corporate MSM who paid Garavelli to gab and yelly.
Giyane the judge can only be concerned about what was published and not how they were paid or their political affiliations.
The trick the state has against private prosecutions is for the CPS to take over the case and then drop it, but I really can’t see how they could do such a thing here without looking blatantly corrupt
Is it Lady Dorrian herself that will be carrying out the sentencing? Now that she’s got her trial period for testing out doing away with juries for sexual offences trials – no doubt her proposal was approved because of the enhanced publicity offered by a high-profile trial – I wonder if she’ll pay more attention to the need for the judiciary to be SEEN to be fair and unbiased. Who, after all, wants judge-only rulings in any criminal court where judges can’t be trusted to be fair and unbiased, and are shown to have already condemned the accused based on personal prejudice.
None of this would have been an issue, of course, if the accused had been afforded anonymity the same as the accusers, as would have been fair. Innocent until proven guilty – or in Alex Salmond’s case, innocent and then proven innocent and so continues to be innocent. That people still use false allegations to denigrate a citizen publicly not only makes them look stupid, but also suggests our legal system is not fit for purpose.
The entire premise of Craig’s case – that no reporting should ever be done on the defence case – puts into question how any criminal case can be fair and unbiased. This certainly won’t be resolved by having judge-only rulings for some criminal cases – and certainly not if the judge in Alex Salmond’s trial is seen to show a huge amount of bias against the accused and anyone supporting him, or even just reporting fairly on the evidence in support of him.
I have seen people say that Lady Dorrian is a fair judge, but what I see is someone with a vested interest in making it seem like there is doubt on a verdict in a high profile case, and so anything that shows clearly why Alex Salmond was aquitted – because all the allegations were false – she’ll want suppressed. I question her ability to judge, and question the validity of her proposed ‘trial without jury’ system, based on what has already happened. If she sentences Craig to jail or even fines him over fair reporting – I would like to see an investigation into her integrity and her pet project halted until we can be assured checks and balances – something obviously missing in this entire affair – can be assured of.
Strength to you Craig, you have done no wrong, hold your head high however much personal information is aired in public – we are all just people in all our myriad of forms – I have hope that Lady Dorrian will stick with her self-interest in this case and realise a quiet dropping of any sentencing will be more beneficial to her vested interests. Best wishes, and don’t let the stress overwhelm you.
At the end of a criminal trial in the event of a guilty verdict the Crown has to ‘move for sentence’. So assuming that contempt of court hearings follow the same procedure as criminal trials there has to be a sentence of some sort. Unless, I am mistaken there is no option for the Judge to just ‘quietly drop the sentencing’. So the best we can hope for under Scots Law is an ‘admonishment’ (basically a judicial telling-off). Or deferred for ‘good behaviour’ and then admonishment at a latter hearing. As that would serve to prolong the judicial torture. Anyway, Good Luck, Craig!
Okay, I expect an admonishment would be the best outcome for Craig’s health – though the case going to appeal and seeing Lady Dorrian’s judgement hammered would be good to see – though we can’t be certain of that outcome so a good old fashioned telling off sounds like the best option. Still, it’s galling that it has come to this.
Fingers crossed for you today Craig.
you work will remain of great value regardless of the outcome.
and your future work will be held in the same regard.
salute
£20 donation made and standing order created for ongoing support.
Best wishes Craig.
The Torture Continues , Justice denied and road to ECHR delayed again…
Adjourned until Tuesday morning!
Taylor Hudak @_taylorhudak
The court is adjourned until Tuesday morning at 9:45am where a sentence in the case of Craig Murray is expected. Lady Dorrain said the court needed additional time to pay “proper attention” to the submission made this morning. She said this is a “difficult and anxious matter.”
Make of that what you will.
https://mobile.twitter.com/_taylorhudak/status/1390613979203096579
Yes indeed, it is a ” difficult and anxious matter ” for HER place in the history books.
Heard about the postponement; once more, words fail me. Have sent another wee contribution. Stay safe xx
Submissions made require the court to have more time to consider/reconsider. The submissions appear to relate to CM’s personal circumstance. Surely these circumstances ought to have been considered before today? Are they just hanging on to see the election results? More anxious waiting. Just how long do they need to make a decision?
https://www.thenational.scot/news/19286418.craig-murray-judges-urged-not-jail-diplomat-alex-salmond-trial-coverage/
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/local/dundee/2200636/breaking-blogger-who-breached-salmond-trial-identity-rules-to-be-sentenced-on-monday/
Another question comes to mind. Will an appeal be made against the initial court ruling of contempt of court regardless of the sentencing or will you wait and see what the impact of the sentencing is?
It is a ridiculous state of affairs that journalistic free speech is so selective under our law, it pains one to see such selectivity being used as if to protect people (and rightly so) but using the easy target to pretend such a legal premise, rather than being honest about who has actually helped identify those the law claims to protect.
It makes Law look basically unable to be realistic and serving the public interest.
I will send you twenty quid Craig.