They're at it again re book "banning"

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

Foreign Office threatens action against former Uzbek envoy

The Foreign Office is threatening action against Craig Murray, the former ambassador to Uzbekistan, if he publishes an unauthorised book attacking the use of intelligence obtained under torture.

This comes after the blocking of key parts of an account of the Iraq war by another of Britain's senior diplomats, former UN ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock, in which he calls the US decision to invade "politically illegitimate".

Mr Murray has failed to submit his memoirs for clearance and the Foreign Office said yesterday there were a "range of options" open to it if he went ahead.

Although it would, in theory, be possible to prosecute him under the Official Secrets Act, the government is more likely to bring a civil action against him for breach of confidence.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,11538,1536798,00.html

see also:

No 10 blocks envoy's book on Iraq
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1530311,00.html

and:

Ex spin doctor's book faces ban
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,9061,1531437,00.html

[evermind]

1. Interesting.. If he's not submitted it for clearance he may be planning

to cut to the chase, and publish abroad.. ;-)

I like his response at the end of the article: "The material in his book had already featured in a 'host' of articles, he said: 'So if you want to take action under the Official Secrets Act, I suggest you get on with it.'"

Thanks for the links!

(He's right about his allegations being already published, of course, as one can see in his quite lengthy interview at: https://www4.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/02/304790.html , from which I've extracted a few paragraphs below )

<Q: about torture in Uzbekistan>

A: It’s completely systematic, and not rare at all. Thousands of people are tortured every year, undoubtedly. Attention always focuses when people are tortured to death, but that’s a tiny minority of the cases. The people who are torturing are doing so to extract information and confessions usually. In the cases of the guys who were boiled to death, they were trying to get them to sign a recantation of their faith, which is a slightly different situation. Most of the torture goes on to try to extract so-called confessions. But the last thing the torturer wants is a dead person. It gives them a lot of explaining to do, and you can’t get any more information out of them, they can’t sign anything when they’re dead. So the torture deaths only happen by accident in a tiny minority of the cases. There are thousands of cases every year of people being tortured. In the Uzbek courts, in both political and criminal cases, the conviction rate is over 99%. Over 99% of people who come to court are found guilty. I know that the conviction rate’s over 99%, it’s not a kind of estimate. We did a project on court reporting, where we worked with a lot of courts throughout the country for a couple of years. Now I can’t give you as precise a figure, but in over 90% of cases – and I would guess over 95% of cases – the accused person signs a full confession. Now you have to ask yourself why? And the reason is, the way the criminal justice system runs is the police decide who did it, then beat the hell out of them, suffocate them, dip bits of them into boiling liquid or whatever until they sign a confession. Then they’re convicted. And the same applies in cases of political and religious dissidents. About a quarter of all so-called criminal cases in Uzbekistan are actually political or religious in their motivation.

<Q: And MI6 have used information gained by torture?>

A: I’ve got no doubts about it whatsoever. I’m 100 percent sure of it, and in all my dealings with the British government about it – and I’ve been called back from Uzbekistan to have meetings specifically on the subject – they have never denied it. The British government has never denied it, and scores of British reporters have phoned up the Foreign Office and said, “What is the line?” and they always come back with the same line. It’s that “it would be irresponsible to ignore useful evidence in the war against terror”. They have never said, “No, we’re not gaining evidence from torture,” – the British government has never denied it. They can’t deny it.

<Q: about US planes bringing people in to be tortured under "extraordinary rendition">

A: Well yes, that Gulfstream plane came in to Tashkent several times while I was there, and it’d bring in detainees. As far as I’m aware it only brought in Uzbek detainees from Bagram airport, from Afghanistan. I’ve had many people allege to me that Americans used it to bring non-Uzbek-related detainees in specifically to be tortured for questioning. I never saw any evidence of that. I’m not saying it isn’t true, but to my knowledge I only know of it bringing in detainees from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan.

<snip>

I asked my deputy to speak to the head of the CIA station in Tashkent. And what I said was, “I don’t want to put my foot in it here. Now it’s possible that the CIA have got a special arrangement with the Uzbek security services which makes certain that the intelligence they get wasn’t obtained under torture, maybe they have special photographs, and CIA people posted at all interrogations, and arrangements are in place. I don’t want to make a fool of myself. We need to check that this really is obtained under torture.” So she went and saw the CIA head of station in Tashkent, and this was in November 2002, and said to him, “Look, my ambassador’s worried that the intelligence you’re passing on to MI6 is probably obtained under torture, and he wants your take on whether this is possible”. And she reported back to me, absolutely no reason to disbelieve her, the CIA head of station Tashkent said: “You’re right, it will be obtained under torture. But, we don’t see that as a problem.”

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

2. He's also got a website

which has a load of articles & interviews:

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/