Craig Murray was a UK diplomat who protested Britain’s complicity in torture and human rights abuses in Uzbekistan. He was subject to a smear campaign, although eventually cleared, and lost his job. He has written a book about the issue, but sections of it were changed at the insistence of the UK Foreign Office, who are now trying to suppress publication of the supporting documentation, some of which shows the changes which were insisted upon. A detailed description of the situation is here.
Those FOI and other documents from Craig Murray are available here to look at. They’re mostly pdfs.
- Butt
- Community
- Declaration
- Drake
- Duffield
- FCO_Comment
- Hill_negotiation
- IMF
- Iraq
- Reynolds
- Smith
- Speech
- Straw
- Telegram
- Wood
The Foreign Office is trying to suppress the publication of this information, using spurious copyright claims.
As Craig Murray says:
Some are new to the web. Perhaps the most important is the chart of the changes the British Government insisted be made to the book. These are extremey revealing for what they admit to be true – for example, only minor changes are requested in the key meeting between senior officials on the legality of using intelligence from torture, at which it was confirmed that this is US and UK policy.
Perhaps still more revealing is the insistence on removal of the assertion that “Colin Powell knowingly lied” when he claimed that bombs in Tashkent were the work of al-Qaida. The British government insisted on removal not because it was untrue – as detailed in the book, they know full well it is true – but because it would “Damage UK-US relations”.
The chart of changes requested to the book is in the “FCO comment” document.
Of course this has all happened at the time of publication of the book, but it’s not a media stunt, as
far as I can tell, but a genuine attempt to prevent censorship.