andrew
British ambassador to Iraq predicts civil war and breakup of the country
From the Scotsman
LONDON – Iraq is more likely to slide into civil war than turn into a democracy, Britain’s outgoing ambassador to Baghdad wrote in a leaked diplomatic cable, the BBC reported on Thursday.
William Patey’s final cable from Baghdad gives a far more pessimistic assessment for prospects in Iraq than Britain has disclosed in public. It warns of the prospect of Shi’ite militia forming a “state within a state”, like Hizbollah in Lebanon.
“The prospect of a low intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy,” he wrote, according to excerpts quoted by the BBC.
“Even the lowered expectation of President (George W.) Bush for Iraq — a government that can sustain itself, defend itself and govern itself and is an ally in the war on terror — must remain in doubt,” said the cable, sent to Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Describing the main Shi’ite militia, he wrote: “If we are to avoid a descent into civil war and anarchy then preventing the (Mehdi Army) from developing into a state within a state, as Hizbollah has done in Lebanon, will be a priority.”
Patey did, however, also say that the situation in Iraq “is not hopeless”.
The Foreign Office said it does not comment on leaked documents.
“Every day the capacity of the Iraqi security forces to manage their own security is growing,” a spokeswoman said.
The view expressed in Patey’s cable reflects pessimism that has settled among senior Iraqi officials as violence has increased in the three months since a new “unity” government took power.
A senior Iraqi government official told Reuters last month that “Iraq as a political project is finished”, with the capital split into Sunni and Shi’ite districts and officials working to divide control of the country on ethnic and sectarian lines.
Blair’s ‘new’ foreign policy
Following a speech in the US yesterday by Tony Blair, LFCM comments on the ‘new’ vision for UK foreign policy?
Click here to read
Ambassador’s Tell-All Memoir: The Moscow Times Review
By Jill Lawless in The Moscow Times
LONDON – Craig Murray says he’s an accidental ambassador. His allies consider him a hero. His opponents say he’s a disaster.
Britain’s former top diplomat in Uzbekistan, Murray was removed from his post in 2004 after accusing the government of torture and of holding thousands of political and religious prisoners.
His comments won him praise from human rights groups, ordinary Uzbeks – and, he says, many other diplomats. But within months the self-confessed whisky-loving womanizer was accused of mismanagement and sexual misconduct, saw his private life splashed across the tabloid press, was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown and finally was removed from his post.
Murray is unrepentant about his highly undiplomatic behavior. To the British government’s chagrin, he has published a book, “Murder in Samarkand,” recounting the whole grisly affair.
Public meeting at UCL on government plans to spy on internet users
Over the summer the Home Office is holding two public consultations on
government powers to spy on Internet usage and demand passwords from
computer users. A free public meeting at University College London is
being held on 14 August to hear a range of views on these powers, from
government officials and peers to computer security and human rights
experts. The meeting will also hear about problems in the way that
computer evidence has been used to obtain convictions. Attendees will
get a detailed insight into this obscure area of British law that will
have a huge impact on privacy and human rights in the information age.
For further details go here
A class war?
Proving you can be a chinless wonder and an unpleasant bastard at the same time.
One of the points I make in “Murder in Samarkand” is that part of the antagonism towards me in the FCO was class based – I went entirely to state schools.
The FCO were quoted on Radio 4 on 28 July as saying that I was peddling an old-fashioned stereotype, no longer true.
Here is the board of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2004, the year I was sacked as Ambassador. Several of this bunch appear frequently in “Murder in Samarkand”.
Every single member of the board went to private school. (Despite the name, Leeds Grammar is a private school). Which explains a huge amount – including how they can look down their noses at dead children, and think “we must buy Israel more time to complete this.”
Craig
Mr. McNamara: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs who the members of the Departmental Board are, broken down by (a) gender, (b) race or ethnicity, (c) whether they attended public or independent school and (d) whether they attended Oxford University or Cambridge University; and how long each has been in post. [172117]
Mr. Straw: The Data Protection Act prevents us from providing information about the ethnicity or race of individuals. The members of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Board, and the background information requested, as published in Who’s Who, is as follows:
Sir Michael Jay’Sir Michael has been in his current post for two years. He was educated at Oxford and London Universities, and Winchester College.
Sir Stephen Brown’Sir Stephen has been in his current post for two years. He was educated at Sussex University, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and Leeds Grammar School.
John Sawers’ John Sawers has been in his current post for one year. He was educated at Nottingham University, and Beechen Cliff School, Bath.
Kim Darroch’Kim Darroch has been in his current post for one year. He was educated at Durham University, and Abingdon School.
Martin Donnelly’Martin Donnelly has been in his current post for two months. He was educated at Oxford University and Saint Ignatius College.
William Ehrman’William Ehrman has been in his current post for two years. He was educated at Cambridge University, and Eton.
Richard Stagg’Richard Stagg has been in his current post for one year. He was educated at Oxford University, and Winchester College.
David Warren’David Warren has been in his current post for three months. He was educated at Oxford University, and Epsom College.
Simon Fraser’Simon Fraser has been in his current post for two years. He was educated at Cambridge University, and St. Paul’s School.
Simon Gass’Simon Gass has been in his current post for three years. He was educated at Reading University, and Eltham College.
HRW: Israeli failure to distinguish combatants and civilians is a war crime
From Human Rights Watch
(Beirut, July 30, 2006) ‘ Responsibility for the Israeli airstrikes that killed at least 54 civilians sheltering in a home in the Lebanese village of Qana rests squarely with the Israeli military, Human Rights Watch said today. It is the latest product of an indiscriminate bombing campaign that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have waged in Lebanon over the past 18 days, leaving an estimated 750 people dead, the vast majority of them civilians.
‘Today’s strike on Qana, killing at least 54 civilians, more than half of them children, suggests that the Israeli military is treating southern Lebanon as a free-fire zone,’ said Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch. ‘The Israeli military seems to consider anyone left in the area a combatant who is fair game for attack.’
This latest, appalling loss of civilian life underscores the need for the U.N. Secretary-General to establish an International Commission of Inquiry to investigate serious violations of international humanitarian law in the context of the current conflict, Roth said. Such consistent failure to distinguish combatants and civilians is a war crime.
Massacres and Wirecutters
I just don’t know what to say. The bodies of so many children bring tears, not words.
Even if you believed the crazy Bush and Blair logic, I cannot understand how anyone can look at these tiny corpses and say “it is worth it to eradicate Islamic fundamentalism”. If you do that, you could watch the corpses from the gas chambers and say “its worth it to elminate the World Jewish conspiracy.” This is crazed and aburd. We must reject the logic of hate.
Even last night and this morning, the UK and US are still working full out at the UN to head off any resolution calling for an urgent unconditional ceasefire. Instead we are pushing a plan which involves the ethnic cleansing of Southern Lebanon to create an empty zone – and the international community is expected to enforce the ethnic cleansing.
President Chirac’s proposal has much more justice – that there should be an international force deployed equally both sides of the border. We have made plain at the UN that we will veto such a proposal. Blair is still pushing Bush’s view that the US has to have latitude to pursue the military option while diplomacy goes on, until the world is obliged to accept ethnic cleansing.
And if it needed any more underlining, where was Tony Blair? At a meeting addressing Rupert Murdoch’s chief executives from News International. My last musings suggested that anyone who stayed in the Labour Party was a pariah. That was not strong enough.
I don’t know if the bomb that killed 37 – and rising – children was carried on a plane that landed in the UK. Quite likely. I see that Prestwick being considered insecure, they are now coming through USAF Mildenhall.
I hope that everyone will come to the national demo from the Stop the War Movement on 5 August. Once that is over, perhaps the next day, let us organise a reclamation, however temporary, of part of Mildenhall from the Americans.
This is going to involve, at least, getting beaten up and arrested. But how do you weigh that against 37 child corpses? I am up for it. Wire cutters, anyone?
Craig
Despite the threats… – A review from the Sunday Post
The Sunday Post interviewed Craig and published the following review of Murder in Samarkand on the 16th July. Click here to open or download file the PDF file
Workers from Uzbekistan sold one of their group to slave-masters to earn their own way home
“This story may be instructive for anyone who feels the events in Murder in Samarkand are far-fetched.”
Craig
From Ferghana.Ru (19.07.2006)
In early spring, four young men from the Samarkand region decided to travel to Russia to earn their families’ living. They had heard somewhere that there were special coaches running to Russia, raised the sum they were told would suffice to pay their fare, and turned up at the bus stop.
“What we had raised was not enough after all,” said Azamat, one of them. “Coach driver said we owed him and would settle the debt in Moscow. We could only agree, and the bus started rolling.”
“When we were travelling across Kazakhstan, the coach was stopped by local gangs on several occasions. The guys just entered and commandeered whatever took their fancy,” Azamat said.
“We could do nothing, not even protest because they could just kick the protester out of the coach, batter him, or even murder him, and leave the body right there in the steppes,” Azamat’s brother Hairullo added.
The road to Moscow took several days and nights. The coach finally made it and this was where the four young Uzbeks discovered what a real nightmare was. The driver beckoned some acquaintance of his, pointed at the four young men, and explained that he owed them and that they were for sale.
Iraq war families win hearing: Legality of invasion to be considered in court
From The Herald (27.07.06)
THE families of four young soldiers killed in Iraq were yesterday granted permission to challenge the government’s refusal to hold a public inquiry into why the UK took part in the war.
But senior appeal court judges who overturned a previous ruling blocking the right to a judicial review over the legality of the conflict also warned it was unlikely that the move “has a real prospect of success”.
The judges added that there were “formidable hurdles in the way of the applicants”, who include Rose Gentle, the Glasgow housewife-turned-campaigner who lost her 19-year-old son Gordon in a roadside bomb attack in Basra in 2004. Lawyers for the government claim it would be “an unwarranted shift of power” for the courts to make pronouncements on the right of an elected government to go to war.
Despite this, Sir Anthony Clarke, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Justice Judge and Lord Justice Dyson, ruled that it was “at least arguable that the question of whether the invasion was lawful ‘ or reasonably thought to be lawful ‘ as a matter of international law is worthy of investigation.”
The Crown’s copyright con
By Becky Hogge in OpenDemocacry
As the UK government abuses copyright law to stifle free speech and obstruct freedom of information, the case of Craig Murray reveals how the impulse of power to control dissent is crushing democratic rights anew.
It is nearly two decades since the British government tried to ban Spycatcher, and you would expect them to have learned their lesson. After throwing ?2 million in legal expenses after the biography of former MI5 operative Peter Wright, her majesty’s government was forced to admit defeat in October 1988, leaving ministers red-faced and Wright seriously in the black, thanks to the free publicity afforded his book by his repeated trips to courts across the globe. Eighteen years on, it’s the turn of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to have a go. But this time they have a new weapon in their armoury – the vagaries of the British copyright system.
The book in question is Murder in Samarkand, the memoirs of former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray. In it, Murray exposes the human rights abuses of Islam Karimov’s regime and details how, during his stay in Tashkent, he came to realise that the “War on Terror”, in which Uzbekistan played ally to the US and UK, was essentially a hypocrisy. The book charts Murray’s confrontation with his superiors at the FCO, his allegations of intelligence obtained under torture, the FCO’s rebuttal of his fears, and their alleged attempts to drive him out of office.
Murray held off publishing Murder in Samarkand for many months as he exchanged letters with the FCO’s Richard Stagg on his intention to publish the book. Although Murray made cuts from the original text, the FCO still threatened legal action were he to publish, on the grounds that the book remained defamatory, inappropriate, misleading and a breach of trust. Stagg also warned that a case against the memoirs might be pursued under copyright law.
Murder in Samarkand: The Curmudgeon Review
It is probably your patriotic duty not to buy it.
By Philip Challinor in The Curmudgeon
It begins with an expression of amazement by a member of the British embassy staff in Uzbekistan. The source of his amazement is the fact that the British ambassador to Uzbekistan has any interest in what might be happening in that part of Uzbekistan which lies outside the gates of his residence. Craig Murray’s predecessors, and presumably successors, displayed no such interest.
As Murray discovered to his cost, this was not incompetence or negligence on their part. Uzbekistan, under the dissident-boiling regime of Islam Karimov, was a designated vital ally in the War Against the Abstract Noun and therefore an automatic recipient of the Bush administration’s seal of approval as a burgeoning democracy. Accordingly, it was the British ambassador’s patriotic duty to sit on his hands, make appropriate noises at social functions, and congratulate the regime on its nonexistent reforms while Karimov’s goons raped as many people and pulled out as many fingernails as they dashed well pleased.
Although a promising diplomat with experience in Nigeria, Ghana and Poland, Murray was unpatriotic enough to allow his personal distaste for torture and totalitarianism to get in the way of his professional judgement. The Foreign Office offered him the gentleman’s way out: a chance to resign rather than be kicked out on charges so incompetently fabricated they were an insult to the craft of trumping-up. Murray compares it to the good old-fashioned Britishness of being given a revolver and expected to do the decent thing; instead of which “I picked it up and started shooting at the bastards”. Truly, our values are not what they once were.
Starting with his witnessing of a dissident “trial”, which was largely a platform for the judge to make bad jokes about Muslims before passing sentence, Murray recounts his professional and personal adventures and vicissitudes from his arrival in Tashkent to his formal suspension from duty and resignation from the diplomatic service. It is clear that he made thoroughly unscrupulous use of his ambassadorial status not only to promote British commercial and cultural interests in Uzbekistan, but also to investigate human rights abuses and even, in one instance, to encourage asylum seekers to apply to the United Kingdom for accommodation. It is heartening to report that, for a change, they were turned down quickly enough to spare the taxpayer both the expense of deporting them and the tedium of reading about them in the Daily Mail.
Naturally, the Foreign Office did all it could to rein in Murray’s excesses. Their efforts to keep him from making a fool of himself led naturally to the ruin of his health, both physical and mental; and naturally, having nothing to hide, the Government has censored his book, delayed its publication and done its best to suppress the correspondence (released under the Freedom of Information Act) which substantiates Murray’s claims. Fortunately, these documents have been mirrored elsewhere, so it is still possible to gain some idea of the Government’s honesty, innocence and pristine attachment to principle.
Like many enemies of truth and decency, Murray exerts a certain dangerous charm. Despite the often harrowing subject matter, his book is always readable, never boring and sometimes hilarious. It is probably your patriotic duty not to buy it; and you certainly will not sleep better if you believe it, even though it does include a tip on how best to drink vodka with the KGB. Doubtless this is why the Government has done so much to protect us from it.
Crown Copyright and the right to know
On Tuesday Craig was interviewed on BBC Today on the issue of crown copyright and the publication of civil servant memoirs. It is now available via Blairwatch.
Click here to listen
US missile flights pressure grows
“We shouldn’t be allowing bombs through our airports to fan this horrendous conflict. This underlines the monumental hypocrisy of the US and Britain. We have been preaching to Iran about arming Hezbollah fighters. And all the while we have been arming the Israelis…”
The Guardian (Thursday July 27)
The chorus of discontent is growing over the US use of British airports as staging posts for transporting weapons to Israel.
Aviation chiefs are investigating whether two chartered flights carrying bunker-busting bombs were properly authorised to stopover at Glasgow Prestwick.
Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett has insisted she is “not happy” and will lodge a formal complaint if the hazardous material protocol failure is proved – raising speculation of a rift in the Transatlantic ‘special relationship’. She has already contacted counterpart Condoleezza Rice to voice her displeasure, while the White House has sought to play the issue down as a “paperwork question”.
But calls for a blanket ban on the US using UK territory when transporting arms to Israel were increasing in volume, with critics blasting the Government’s “monumental hypocrisy” in asking Hezbollah to give up their weapons.
The embarrassing controversy is threatening to overshadow Tony Blair’s arrival in Washington for talks with President George Bush concerning the deteriorating situation in Lebanon.
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Michael Moore has written to Mrs Beckett requesting an “urgent review” of US flights. “In light of Israel’s disproportionate military attacks against civilians and the civilian infrastructure in Lebanon and Gaza, in contravention of international law, the Foreign Secretary is right to be angered that the US is supplying Israel with high tech weaponry via the UK,” he said.
A former British diplomat, who quit as ambassador to Uzbekistan after alleging human rights abuses, said the UK was losing “all credibility with the Arab world”. Craig Murray said: “Whether procedures were followed properly is not the issue. We shouldn’t be allowing bombs through our airports to fan this horrendous conflict. This underlines the monumental hypocrisy of the US and Britain. We have been preaching to Iran about arming Hezbollah fighters. And all the while we have been arming the Israelis, while resisting calls for an immediate ceasefire.”
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which is responsible for UK policing of international rules governing hazardous material, said that it expected to decide by the end of the day whether there had been a breach.
Flights such as that by the two chartered Airbus A310 cargo planes – which were carrying GBU28 laser-guided bombs – usually require “specific exemptions” from hazardous material rules, according to a spokesman. However, the CAA said that it would not be deciding the issue immediately, and only “may” reach a conclusion – when Mr Blair’s visit gets under way.
It is understood that any formal complaint by Britain would be pursued through “diplomatic channels” – either in a letter from Mrs Beckett to Ms Rice or with representations from the UK’s ambassador.
Also, for a look at the wider geo-political implications of the war see Washington risks a wider conflict from the BBC
Lebanon Ceasefire Now Protest to take place in London on Friday
The London CEASEFIRE NOW protest against the war in Lebanon will be in Whitehall on Friday 28 July, 5pm to 7pm, when a letter to Tony Blair insisting that he demand an immediate ceasefire will be handed into 10 Downing Street.
Add your name to the Tony Blair letter here on the Stop the War website at www.stopwar.org.uk
.UNCONDITIONAL CEASEFIRE NOW
.END THE ATTACKS ON LEBANON & GAZA
.END BLAIR’S SUPPORT FOR BUSH’S WARS
London Protest Friday 28 July 5pm to 7pm
Downing Street, Whitehall, SW1
UK airport used to fly bombs to Israel
By Thomas Harding Defence Correspondent and Anil Dawar
Daily Telegraph (26/07/2006)
Britain has been used as a staging post for major shipments of bunker-busting bombs from America to Israel. The Israelis want the 5,000lb smart bombs to attack the bunkers being used by Hizbollah leaders in Lebanon.
Two chartered Airbus A310 cargo planes filled with GBU 28 laser-guided bombs landed at Prestwick airport, near Glasgow, for refuelling and crew rests after flying across the Atlantic at the weekend, defence sources confirmed. The airport has also been used by the CIA for rendition flights carrying terrorist suspects.
The Government’s agreement to the bomb flights was criticised last night by the Liberal Democrats.
“In light of disproportionate military attacks, the Government should take steps to suspend all arms transfers to Israel, whether directly from or through the UK,” said Michael Moore, the party’s foreign affairs spokesman.
President George W Bush appeared uncomfortable when he was asked if he regarded the simultaneous American provision of military support and humanitarian aid to Israel as contradictory. He said that America was honouring commitments to Israel made before the current crisis flared up.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: “We are looking at our approach to these flights.”
It has been reported that efforts to crush Hizbollah have been hindered by a lack of bombs capable of penetrating their command bunkers.
Our man in trouble
REVIEWED BY MAX HASTINGS in the The Sunday Times
It is a horrible story, and rings horribly true. Murray’s testimony forms another piece in the Iraq-WMD-Bush-war-on-terror-Afghanistan jigsaw of shame. It helps explain the moral bankruptcy to which the Blair government has reduced itself.
MURDER IN SAMARKAND: A British Ambassador’s Controversial Defiance of Tyranny in the War on Terror
by Craig Murray
Craig Murray is a former British ambassador to the Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan. To get the flavour of his astonishing career there from 2002-04, consider some of the headings under his name in this book’s index: ‘accusations against; bugging suspicions; sacking; Tashkent, asked to leave; topless bathers; visas for sex allegations; marriage, end of’. Lest anyone still fears this is a humdrum diplomatic memoir, here is Murray’ s account of his first meeting with a teenage belly dancer in a Tashkent niterie: ‘I astonished her by saying that I wanted her to give up the club and be my mistress. I explained that I could not marry her, as I was married, but I would keep her. I gave her my card and urged her to phone me.’
Phew. If this was Foreign Office life in the 21st century, candidates would be breaking down doors to join the party. Only it is not, of course. Murray, a kilted philanderer of heroic recklessness, proved an embarrassment to his masters from the day of his appointment, and ended up parting brass rags with them in a welter of mental breakdowns, publicity, divorce and mutual recriminations that he recounts with masochistic frankness.
‘So much for your dolly-bird secretary,’ he records his wife remarking, in a characteristic marital conversation after a less-than-successful embassy dinner. ‘Even if you aren’t screwing her, everybody thinks you are, and that suits you and your bloody ego!’
The pity of all this soap-opera stuff is that it cripples Murray’s purpose in writing his book: to expose the ghastly conduct of the Uzbek dictatorship and Anglo-American collusion with it. From the day Murray arrived in Tashkent in 2002, aged 43, he was appalled to discover that the regime of President Islam Karimov subsisted on a diet of mass murder, torture and slavery. He not only reported in detail to London, he also began to make speeches about human-rights abuse. His outspoken behaviour earned applause from the western media, oppressed Uzbeks and a few diplomatic colleagues, together with fury from the American ambassador and the Foreign Office.
George Bush and Tony Blair were preparing to invade Iraq. The Uzbek government was among their few Asian supporters. Washington was profoundly grateful to Karimov for granting the Americans basing rights in his country, as well as supporting Bush’s idiotic ‘war on terror’, which provided useful cover for Karimov’s persecution of dissidents.
American politicians and diplomats justified cash handouts to Karimov by asserting that Uzbekistan was moving towards democracy; that its human-rights record was improving. Murray encountered daily proof that this view was a travesty. The title of his book refers to an episode when, with his Foreign Office superior, he visited a prominent dissident. Within hours of their departure the man’s grandson was murdered, almost certainly by government agents. Murray was certain that this was retribution for meeting the British.
Yet the FCO refused to make a fuss. Pressure on Murray from Whitehall mounted, as he became passionately critical of the relationship between Whitehall secret services and the Uzbeks, who routinely tortured people to death to gain information. At one point, Murray attended a meeting in London at which a senior Foreign Office lawyer sought to soothe the ambassador, assuring him that there was no legal barrier to the British government’s use of evidence gained by torture in its campaign against terrorism.
Whitehall dug for dirt on rebel envoy
By Jack Grimston in the Sunday Times
A ROGUE diplomat has posted evidence on his website of what he says was an ‘extraordinary’ campaign by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to trawl for incriminating evidence about his private life.
The internal FCO documents posted by Craig Murray, who was sacked as British ambassador to Uzbekistan in 2004, include references to him attending a strip club, and allegations that he kept a flat for unspecified ‘entertainment’ purposes.
The papers also include a summary of passages that Murray agreed to remove from a new memoir. Among them are alleged indiscretions by his US counterpart in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital. Murray decided last week to take down some of the documents after government lawyers threatened to sue him for breach of crown copyright.
The former diplomat, 47, was recalled to London in 2003 for ‘medical reasons’ before being sacked. He is now making a film about his experiences. Murray believes officials were trying to gather evidence about his private life to stop him speaking out about the poor human rights record of Islam Karimov, the Uzbek president. ‘I wanted to publish the documentation to corroborate my story, especially as the FCO is claiming the story is untrue,’ he said.
The documents have angered not only Murray but the anti-war Labour MP Andrew MacKinlay. One, which is heavily blacked out, contains a passing reference to MacKinlay: ‘We also know that Craig Murray has tried to contact Andrew MacKinlay MP.’
Both Murray and MacKinlay said this weekend they had ‘no idea’ how the FCO could have known this, except by bugging. ‘I am frightened and concerned,’ said MacKinlay. ‘It is menacing and an affront to the democratic process that they should try to find out who has been trying to contact an MP.’
Murray was posted to Uzbekistan in 2002. He soon made himself unpopular with his hosts ‘ as well as with the Americans and with the FCO ‘ by being outspoken on human rights. Karimov was seen as a key ally in the war on terror, particularly for operations in Afghanistan, and he was taking draconian steps against anyone suspected of Islamist links.
One of Murray’s claims was that a dissident died as a result of being boiled by his torturers. The documents on the website include a series of angry exchanges with Murray’s FCO masters.
After Murray had sent a draft speech to London for checking, Charles Hill, an FCO official, reproached him for what he called the ‘soapbox tone of the peroration’. In reply Murray noted acidly that one official had called torture by boiling water ‘horrid’ and added: ‘I presume you think he is being a bit strong.’
The passages deleted from the book, Murder in Samarkand, at the request of the FCO, include a reported conversation with John Herbst, Murray’s American counterpart. Herbst and Murray discussed human rights in Uzbekistan and dangers from Islamic militants.
Murray said: ‘NGOs (non-governmental organisations) estimate there are some 7,000 prisoners of conscience,’ to which Herbst replied: ‘Yes, but most of those are Muslims,’ to which Murray responded ‘I’m sorry?’ Herbst corrected himself, saying: ‘I mean Muslim extremists. Most of those prisoners are Muslim extremists.’
Murray said he had not included the comments in the book because they were probably a slip of the tongue ‘ albeit, he added, probably ‘a Freudian slip’, reflecting the American view that the Uzbek regime was justified in locking up suspected militants.
In the same talk, Herbst mused to Murray that if fundamentalists came to power there would be an end to ‘watching the pretty Uzbek girls go by in T-shirts and skirts’.
Some of the memos report tittle-tattle, including a claim that Murray visited a strip club in Warsaw. Murray said this weekend: ‘I went to a strip club in Poland on a stag night once.’
Murray said he deplored the FCO’s digging into his private life rather than taking seriously his human rights arguments. One memo described how, after a dinner in Tashkent, ‘Craig, in the company of a young female fixer, went off in search of a jazz club’.
Murray said: ‘The evening he (the official) is referring to is the evening that we were at the home of a dissident whose grandson was murdered while we were dining. Me going for a drink afterwards rates a mention, but the murder of our host’s grandson doesn’t.’
The FCO said Murray’s book was a ‘betrayal of trust’, adding: ‘Some of its contents are misleading and incorrect.’
Dimming the beacon of freedom
From ACLU
GENEVA ‘ The American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Human Rights Network hosted a panel of people who have been victimized by the U.S. government’s failure to uphold civil and political rights. On Monday, the U.N. Human Rights Committee (HRC) is scheduled to review the United States’ compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a major international human rights treaty ratified by the United State in 1992.
The ACLU report, Dimming the Beacon of Freedom: U.S. Violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, documents the United States record on human rights in five areas: national security, women’s rights, racial justice, immigrants rights and religious freedom.
‘What I am seeking is an acknowledgement that the CIA is responsible for what happened to me, an explanation as to why this happened, and an apology,’ said Khaled El Masri, a victim of extraordinary rendition who spoke on the Voices of Victims panel. ‘It is my hope that the Human Rights Committee will hold the U.S. government accountable for the abuse I have suffered.’