UK jails former ambassador to Uzbekistan over blog posts
Saeed Pourreza
PressTV, London
A tearful farewell to Craig Murray from his family and supporters as the 62-year-old former diplomat hands himself in to Edinburgh police.
In May, Scotland’s second most senior judge accused Mr. Murray of deliberately risking “jigsaw identification’’- an obscure term meaning if pieced together, his posts could’ve led readers to identify women who made sexual assault allegations against former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, a charge Murray denies. But the UK’s Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal last week.
Mr. Murray is not only known for his Alex Salmond blog posts. The independent blogger, is a dedicated defender of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange jailed in a UK maximum security prison.
In May, Murray released this tweet saying he’d been banned by judges from travelling to Spain where he was to give evidence in a criminal prosecution over CIA spying activities against Assange.
Craig Murray became the UK’s ambassador to British ally Uzbekistan in 2002 but was removed from his post only two years later after his revelations on human rights abuses and torture in the former Soviet state because an embarrassment to the British government.
The Scottish former diplomat and father of a newborn is the first person incarcerated in the UK over a media contempt case in 50 years. Campaigners say his imprisonment sets a dangerous legal precedent for freedom of speech and independent journalism.
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