The Ambassador's Tale

I promised to blog about this earlier in the week but was overtaken by various campaigning activities in the course of the European election campaign. I went on Tuesday to hear Craig Murray, the former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan give evidence to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. Greeting Craig in the corridor beforehand, I wished him good luck and introduced myself as a European Parliamentary Candidate for the Greens in London. He thanked me and told me that he knew me, as he was a regular reader of my blog!
Anyway, Craig was expecting a rough ride but in the process there was no attack on him but one or two subtle attempts to scuttle his evidence. However, he held to his guns and gave a firm and principled account of what happened during his watch in Tashkent. An account of what he said was reported on one BBC website but other than that I have not seen much evidence of reporting.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8023111.stm

He emerged as a man of principle and integrity who had paid the price for speaking out against his political masters. Two of the most interesting points for me were when he was asked about the stance of other British ambassadors and about the accuracy of his reports.
He told how when he reported to other ambassadors in the region about the Foreign Office’s refusal to deal with his queries about torture in Uzbekistan and how this might be an infringement of the UN Convention against Torture, the response had been “Rather you than me.” Questioned further about this he was asked why no other senior civil servant had spoken out about UK complicity in torture. He replied that it would have meant career death and that in the US many lawyer s had gone along with the legalisation of torture for similar reasons. Once again we see the Nuremburg situation of how so many just obeyed orders and kept their heads down.

When asked if the Foreign Office had ever denied his accounts of what happened, he said that they had not and then something surreal occurred. He showed a document from the FCO where they had given him a list of amendments to notes in his book about his experiences in Tashkent, but these had all been minor textural amendments. So basically they accepted that his account was true.

He went on to state that the government had spread lies about him and done everything they could to discredit him, including accusing him of being an alcoholic. His book is well worth reading for an accurate account of how low this country’s foreign policy has fallen. Finally, Craig said that he was certain that Jack Straw had known about everything which happened.
Good luck to you Craig and may you continue to speak out for truth and justice. Hopefully some day you will be able to give evidence about the true war criminals in this government.
Craig’s book is Murder in Samarkand. A British Ambassador’s Controversial Defiance of Tyranny in the War on Terror.