Blairwatch - Background:
The UK government has been quick to deny that we practice, or tolerate the practice of Torture. So it is perhaps not suprising that they are determined that you should not see the following documents...

Craig Murray was the UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, untill his complaints and protest at the use of intelligence gained by torture got too much for Jack Straw and the Foreign Office, who set about attempting to unsuccessfully smear him, and to successfully remove him from office...

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Mr Murray, who publicly raised the issue of the usefulness of information obtained under torture before he was forced to leave his job last year, submitted his forthcoming book, Murder in Samarkand, to the Foreign Office for clearance. But the Foreign Office demanded that he remove references to two sensitive government documents, which undermine official denials, to show that Britain had been aware it was receiving information obtained by the Uzbek authorities through torture. Rather than submit to the gagging order Mr Murray decided to publish the material on the internet

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Speech given by Craig Murray, Feb. 27/05:

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When you become an ambassador you pay courtesy calls on your counterparts. I went and I called on the French and the German ambassadors and I said to them ‘this is just appalling, I can’t believe the things I’m finding here. I’m completely struck by it’. The French ambassador said ‘Oh well you shouldn’t meet these people if it upsets you’. The German ambassador said ‘of course we all know human rights abuses here are very bad, but of course we also know President Karimov is a very close ally of the United States and so we have an agreement that we don’t mention it’. I sent a telegram back to London in which I reported he’s said this and said that I presumed that there wasn’t such an agreement in any formal sense and I had no doubt whatsoever that British ministers wouldn’t agree to such a thing and I proposed to start making some speeches and kicking up a fuss about it, which I then did (before they had time to reply).

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But as the UPI story points out, there is a USian angle to the story:

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Murray's decision to publish the documents also implicates the United States, Britain's closest ally. In another confidential report to London, dated 18 March 2003, Murray wrote: "As seen from Tashkent, U.S. policy is not much focussed on democracy or freedom. It is about oil, gas and hegemony. In Uzbekistan, the United States pursues those ends through supporting a ruthless dictatorship. We must not close our eyes to uncomfortable truth."

"Last year the United States gave half a billion dollars in aid to Uzbekistan, about a quarter of it military aid. Bush and Powell repeatedly hail (President Islam) Karimov as a friend and ally. Yet this regime has at least seven thousand prisoners of conscience; it is a one party state without freedom of speech, without freedom of media, without freedom of movement, without freedom of assembly, without freedom of religion. It practices, systematically, the most hideous tortures on thousands. Most of the population live in conditions precisely analogous with medieval serfdom."

"Democracy and human rights are, despite their protestations to the contrary, in practice a long way down the U.S. agenda here," Murray goes on. "While the U.S. makes token and low-level references to human rights to appease domestic opinion, they view Karimov's vicious regime as a bastion against fundamentalism. He - and they - are in fact creating fundamentalism. When the US gives this much support to a regime that tortures people to death for having a beard or praying five times a day, is it any surprise that Muslims come to hate the West?"

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Ex-Envoy: British Used Intel Afte Torture

AP - A former British ambassador has published government documents he says prove that Britain knowingly received intelligence extracted under torture from prisoners in Uzbekistan.

Craig Murray, who was removed as ambassador to Uzbekistan after going public about his concerns, defied a Foreign Office ban to publish the internal memos on his Web site Friday. The documents include memos to Foreign Office chiefs in which Murray expressed his concern over the use of "torture material."

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Originally posted by Transplant:
AP now has the story too.

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Observer - British officials have admitted MI6 officers were present during the interrogation of 28 Pakistanis in Greece, despite apparent denials by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

They insist, however, that the officers took no active part in the men's arrest, questioning or abuse that was later alleged.

Guardian - A Moroccan wanted in Spain over his alleged links to the 9/11 attackers today told his extradition hearing he had been tortured on the "direct orders" of British intelligence.

Farid Hilali said the alleged torture took place while he was being held by the intelligence services of the United Arab Emirates and Morocco.