Dave Llewellyn
 Dave Llewellyn     (political activist) | |
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| Party | Alba Party |
Dave Llewellyn is a campaigner for Scottish independence and supporter of the Alba Party whose Twitter page states:
"This account suffers from something called Twitter Tourettes. If I see something I say it. These things can be offensive but are in no way criminal."[1]
English tourists "go home"
Dave Llewellyn was involved in the July 2020 coronavirus protest at the Scots border telling English tourists to "go home".[2]
Speaking up for Craig Murray
At a Hope Over Fear event on 19 September 2021, Dave Llewellyn spoke powerfully in support of the imprisoned blogger Craig Murray.[3]
Transcript
This is a transcript of Dave Llewellyn's YouTube speech:
| CMJ Campaign with Dave Llewellyn |
"This is a speech I never hoped to be making. My friend Craig Murray is now sixteen days away from being halfway through an eight month sentence for telling the truth. Basically, on 16 March 2020 I stood outside Edinburgh High Court talking to Craig. Craig had just arrived the day before from reporting on the Assange trial down in London. And he was the only journalist allowed in that court. The only one, none of the mainstream media were allowed in. He got in because, basically, he was friends with the family. So basically he comes up to me and just inside twenty to nine in the morning he says:
'Davie, I don't know how it is possible for people like Julian Assange and Alex Salmond to have the weight of the state on top of them. I don't know how I would survive.'
"Twenty minutes later we walked into the court and two police people came up to us and said you cannot go in, you've been banned from the court by the Judge. I could go in but Craig had to go. The police sergeant came up to me and said 'Don't worry Davie he's not in any bother'.
"Well he's now halfway through an 8-month sentence because he actually reported what was going on in the court. He reported stuff that most people weren't allowed to hear. He didn't actually report what was illegal, but nobody else reported the defence case. He was the only person – I sat beside him – and he sat with his wee notebook. Craig he's a wee bit bad in his sight and he writes with his left hand. And he sat scribbling everything absolutely perfectly, every witness that came up, everything, he noted it all down. I didn't do that, I was making vigils because I wasn't allowed to use my phone in the court. So he was writing it all down. And there we have it.
"The next thing is he gets charged with this jigsaw identification, which nobody has ever been jailed for in the history of the world. The last people jailed in the UK for contempt of court in the media was 50 years ago, and the last time in Scotland was 70 years ago.
"All Craig Murray did was to report the defence case that none of the mainstream media would actually do. Which means that you were all being told lies...that you were not able to make a judgment. Well the jury heard what I heard, and the same as Craig Murray heard. And guess what, they came to the same decision. They came to the same verdict. So there was something not right there. So they decided OK let's do something about it.
"Now Lady Dorrian is the second highest Judge in Scotland. She sat in that court on the Alex Salmond trial. She sat in the court over Craig Murray who was not allowed a jury. You're entitled to a jury of your peers in this country. No jury. They didn't want a jury for Alex Salmond. Now she sat on Craig's trial, and she sat on Craig's appeal, and she sat on the refusal of his right to appeal to the UK/Supreme Court in London.
"And this is the thing, why is he going to a UK court? Because if he wants to go to the European Court of Human Rights, he has to go through every single legal option in this country. And that unfortunately includes the UK/Supreme Court.
"So let's move away from that. What's happening now? Craig is doing another little loop that he's got to jump through. He's making an appeal to the nobile officium which is basically the court of last resort in Scotland which you have to do before you can do anything else which has to be done. Joanna Cherry used it last year with the prorogation of Parliament, when she took Boris Johnson to court. So that's being done at the moment.
"The campaign hasn't got a lot of hope that there's going to be any success because Lady Dorrian is actually lobbying the government to have all sex cases heard without juries. So there you go, how can you trust a Judge who's a lobbyist? It's not right. Where is the Justice? Where is the democracy? Anybody that says it, anybody that tells you gets into a battle with the police, and gets dragged away. Because that's what happened to me.
"Right so anyway, we go through the nobile officium. Craig is going to be finished his sentence on St Andrews Day this year. He'll never get that time back. His wife has been working a miracle with a brand new baby. And his 12-year-old son has not been able to see his father since the 1st August. The son can only see him on a video link as he can't go to the jail because she has to look after the baby at the weekend. She can only go on a schoolday. So much for the rights of the child that the Scottish government are bringing in.
"In the normal set of circumstances, Craig would be entitled to get early release on a tag. But he's a civil prisoner. Only criminals get out on a tag! And Keith Brown could change all that with one stroke of the pen under secondary legislation, a Statutory Instrument, to make it the same for civil prisoners and criminal prisoners. And he's not done it. He's the Justice Minister. So Keith Brown are you happy with this situation? Are you happy that Scotland allows this, because it reflects badly on our country?
"So Craig's going to be out on 30th November but the campaign continues. As I say the next step is the ECtHR and they will overturn this verdict. And Craig's reputation will be restored.
"And that's why it's important that every single one of you out here who ever writes a post on Facebook or Twitter – that's publishing – and if you write anything on there they don't like, they could do something about it. And now bloggers and people who write on social media do not have the same protection that you get if you are writing for a newspaper. Let's take a blogger who also writes for the National. The blogger could write the same article in the National that he writes in his blog. And get jailed for writing in the blog, and not get jailed for writing in the paper. That's the country we're living in at the moment.
"And Craig Murray is away from his family. Away from keeping us informed of what's happening in the world because the government and the judiciary do not like it that you are informed. Well today you've been informed.
"Thank you very much for listening."
