Document:The Crown came for Craig Murray
| “I go to jail with a clean conscience after a Kafkaesque trial. I believe this is actually the state’s long sought revenge for my whistleblowing on security service collusion with torture and my long term collaboration with Wikileaks and other whistleblowers." |
blog post by Gordon Dangerfield dated 29 July 2021Subjects: Craig Murray, James Wolffe, Lady Dorrian, Nicola Sturgeon, Dorothy Bain, Lord Turnbull, COPFS, Alex Salmond, UKSC, ECtHR
Source: Gordon Dangerfield's blog (Link)
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The Crown came for Craig Murray
I’ve copied the press release below from the Wings Over Scotland website. The selective prosecution of Craig Murray by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) is another shameful chapter in their history of incompetence and bad faith.
Legal precedent will be set tomorrow as Craig Murray will be the first person to be imprisoned on the charge of jigsaw identification in the UK, and indeed in the entire world. Scotland’s second most senior judge, Lady Dorrian, sentenced Murray to 8 months of incarceration following a contempt of court charge for ‘jigsaw identification’ relating to the trial against Alex Salmond.
In May Lady Dorrian said that in her view Murray had intended to release identities of Salmond’s accusers. Mr Murray has always denied any intent to identify and that anybody was actually identified. Murray had not directly identified any of the accusers in the Salmond trial, but Dorrian argued identification may be possible if his reporting of the case was read in connection with other materials in the public domain.
No one aside from Murray was charged with jigsaw identification in connection with the Salmond case, despite the fact that 81% of respondents in a Panelbase survey who believed that had learned identities, gave mainstream media as the source of their knowledge. Lady Dorrian specifically stated that bloggers and mainstream media should be treated differently, as mainstream media are self-regulated.
Murray is the first person to be imprisoned in the UK for a media contempt for over 50 years, and in Scotland for over 70 years.
Murray’s imprisonment comes after an announcement from the UK Supreme Court that it will not hear his appeal. Former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray will surrender himself to Police shortly and begin to serve the custodial sentence handed to him. A public protest against Murray’s incarceration is planned. Murray’s wife and mother of their 5 month and 12 year old sons Nadira has written an open letter asking for “active and outspoken solidarity from anyone concerned about the loss of freedom of speech and equality before the law”.
Murray had recently been called as a witness in a case brought by Spanish state prosecutors against UC Global for allegedly acting on behalf of the CIA in covertly spying on Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy. Material before the Spanish court includes several hours of covert surveillance video of Murray in private conversation with Assange on the future of Assange and Wikileaks. The Scottish court removed Murray’s passport expressly to prevent him traveling to Spain to testify.
Craig Murray commented:
“I go to jail with a clean conscience after a Kafkaesque trial. I genuinely do not know who I am supposed to have identified or which phrases I published are said to have identified them, in combination with what other information in the public domain. This judgement will have a chilling effect on reporting of the defence case at trials, to the detriment of justice, and the different treatment of bloggers and approved media is sinister.
"I carefully protect the identities of the accusers in my reports.
"I believe this is actually the state’s long sought revenge for my whistleblowing on security service collusion with torture and my long term collaboration with Wikileaks and other whistleblowers. Unfortunately important free speech issues are collateral damage.”
Murray and the Craig Murray Justice committee have both signalled their intention to continue to resist the penalty handed to him by continuing to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights via all routes required. They are particularly concerned that in her opinion Lady Dorrian implied that bloggers and public commentators like Murray ought to be punished more severely than mainstream journalists for the same offence.
Ellen Joelle Dalzell, coordinator of the Craig Murray Justice campaign group stated:
“The sentence handed to Craig Murray not only sets legal precedent in terms of a custodial sentence for the charge of jigsaw identification, it represents an attack on free speech in general, and a tangible threat to the free reporting of legal trials in particular. "The judgement is excessively punitive, is likely to have severe implications for Murray’s poor health and represents a dangerous precedent for journalists and other writers who seek to fairly report or comment on matters of public law."
Postscript
Gordon Dangerfield commented:
Contrary, the new Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain is indeed married to Alan Turnbull, Lord Turnbull, who was one of the three judges in Craig Murray’s case.
As a matter of interest, he was also the presiding judge, in 2006, in the Tommy Sheridan defamation trial where, fortunately for Tommy, the case was decided by a jury and not the judge. As a result, I appeared before Lord Turnbull representing Tommy a couple of years ago to seek interest on the damages awarded by the jury, a request which was resoundingly refused by the judge. We appealed to the Inner House, where Lord Turnbull’s decision was, equally resoundingly, overturned by the Lord President Lord Carloway and two other senior judges, and Tommy got his interest — another £170,000 odd.
So sometimes the system does work — you just have to be extraordinarily persistent and stubborn![1]
