Craig Murray’s imprisonment is an exceptionally harsh punishment for a principled man who may have taken a a lot simpler route

Incarcerating the previous UK diplomat, human rights activist, and blogger Craig Murray for contempt of courtroom is a disproportionate measure which may have grave repercussions for unbiased journalism.

Simply 17 months in the past, I shared a ‘Free Julian Assange/Imperialism on Trial’ platform with Craig Murray in London. Now Craig, like Julian, is ‘within the nick’. How far-fetched that might have appeared again in February 2020! Then once more, hasn’t the whole lot that’s occurred since early 2020 been relatively far-fetched?

Because it turned out, it wasn’t Murray’s defence of Julian Assange which acquired him into hassle, (or at the least indirectly), however sure blogs he wrote on the trial of former SNP chief Alex Salmond, who was accused of sexual assault. Murray was of the agency opinion that Salmond’s trial was a political set-up. That he was the sufferer, like Assange, of a witch-hunt. So naturally, as a follower of Salmond, he wished to attempt to do one thing about it. This resulted in Murray ultimately being held in contempt of courtroom over so-called ‘jigsaw identification’. Specifically that his posts, whereas not naming anybody, may lead somebody to place collectively the items of the ‘jigsaw’ to determine the accusers within the trial. The irony is that whereas Salmond was acquitted, it’s Murray who’s now going to jail.

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Maybe his weblog posts have been unwise, even reckless. Ron McKay, a revered commentator and diarist of The Herald, thinks they have been one-sided. Maybe Murray ought to have been extra conscious of the dangers, notably figuring out how a lot of a thorn he’s been within the aspect of the powers-that-be ever since he was eliminated as UK ambassador to Uzbekistan over his opposition to egregious human rights abuses that the British authorities – for all its ‘moral’ grandstanding – didn’t appear in any respect involved about.

However whereas nobody denies that contempt of courtroom is a severe offence, even when one have been to determine that Murray was responsible as charged (and McKay believes nobody would have been capable of determine any witnesses from his weblog posts), sentencing this 62-year-old with well being issues to eight months in jail and separating him bodily from his spouse and youngsters appears an unusually harsh, and a few would say merciless, punishment. 

Contemplate this: Craig Murray is the primary individual to be imprisoned in Scotland for media contempt for over 70 years. He’s the primary individual to be imprisoned on the cost of ‘jigsaw identification’ within the UK – and, his crew declare, the world.  

His attorneys have additionally identified that these breaches, if held to have taken place, normally end in a sizeable nice or a suspended sentence. Nobody aside from Murray was charged with contempt in reference to the Salmond case, despite the fact that 81% of individuals in a ballot who consider that they had realized the identities, gave the mainstream media – and never Murray’s weblog – as their supply.

Maybe essentially the most chilling a part of the judgement was the assertion that Murray needed to be handled in another way as a result of he was a ‘journalist in new media’ versus working within the regulated ‘mainstream’. This places indie journos at a particular danger which their mainstream counterparts wouldn’t be topic to.

After all, the circulating claims that Murray has been focused due to his political stance on different points will probably be dismissed as ‘conspiracy concept’. It might after all be very arduous, if not not possible to show. However what we are able to say is that his punishment, objectively talking, is a most extreme one. And now the person who in all probability did greater than anybody else in Britain to marketing campaign for the liberty of Julian Assange – arriving on the courtroom very first thing within the morning, visiting the WikiLeaks founder in his high-security jail, and doing the whole lot he may to lift consciousness of the case and the iniquities of it – is behind bars himself. His weblog has lastly been silenced.

The really stunning jailing of Craig Murray implies that journalists authorised by the state are protected and people who problem energy – actual journalism – are in grave hazard. Learn this:https://t.co/AUf9CILqeB

— John Pilger (@johnpilger) August 1, 2021

Wanting again, it might have been really easy for Murray to have saved schtum in Tashkent all these years in the past – had he finished so, he’d in all probability nonetheless be a extremely paid diplomat. It might have been really easy for Murray to have ‘gone quiet’ on Julian Assange, figuring out what he could be letting himself in for, by way of assaults and character assassination – to say nothing of being ‘Crossed’, by Philip Cross, on Wikipedia. 

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It might have been really easy for Murray to not problem the UK’s neocon overseas coverage, notably in relation to the Center East, once more figuring out of the vicious private assaults that this brings upon one. It might have been really easy too to not query the ‘official’ UK authorities narrative on the Yulia and Sergei Skripal poisoning thriller. And eventually, it might have been really easy for Murray to have blogged about one thing apart from the extremely controversial Alex Salmond case.

However Craig has by no means taken the straightforward route – if ‘simple’ means turning a blind eye to what he perceives to be an injustice. All alongside, this bravest of males, who has by no means performed it protected, has finished what he believes is true. For that he has paid a really excessive value certainly, particularly given the considerations over what a jail sentence will do to his precarious well being. In the meantime, the boys who began the wars he opposed, and who advised us lies to ‘promote’ these wars, stay free.

Is that simply? I’ll depart you to determine.

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