Some voices are less equal than others

A fitted tribute

Here is Craig Murray's auto-bio. Don't be fooled by his understatements. His service to the UK's diplomatic core precedes his authorship of numerous non-fictional titles forcusing on colonial adventures from Africa to Central Asia (the Great Game). He has authored publications at his website, has been a friend and assistant to Julian Assange/Wikileaks, and is an activist for human rights, international law, and passionately, Scottish Independence. While ambassador to Uzbekistan he raised concerns about the use of torture by the local police/intelligence services in association with USA and other western governments, including the UK. Its a matter of principle. It is written in the code of conduct for UK diplomats, and Mr Murray was following protocol and his agreement with the UK's diplomatic service.

I shall retell a vignette of a trip Murray took to the USA around the time of the sequence of leaks delivered to Wikileaks which demonstrated the collusion to deny Senator Bernie Sanders the Democratic Party's nomination for the 2016 presidential election which led to 4+ years of Russiagate nonsense. Mr Murray was in the Washington D.C. area and may or may not have received information from a DNC (Democratic National Committee) insider revealing internal skullduggery. Mr Murray was, however, convinced that USA intelligence groups were following him as he may be involved in some information transfer. Empowered by this understanding, Mr Murray purchased lots of USB/Memory sticks. I would so much like to know what he put on them! He then visits a sequence of houses of ill-repute delivering said sticks to persons at these locations so as to force the intelligence operatives to visit said houses of ill-repute and impound the sticks.

Mr Murray becomes aware of a campaign to malign a former Scottish politician with accusations of sexual misconduct. This is a tricky topic, as I related to my children recently. People who are victims, often and particularly woman or girls, of these horrid behaviors often feel a deep sense of shame. That in itself is a very interesting topic. It takes a great degree of courage to publicly accuse someone of this act for it exposes the pain of the episode. Thus, possible victims of sexual assault deserve support for the bravery of their action. However, guilt is to be decided by the process of a fair trial, and until the jury delivers its verdict we believers in the rule of law shall assume the accused innocent. There is a challenge here, to affirm and support the bravery of the victim making the accusation but to not pass judgement on the accused until the legal process has reached its conclusion. This challenge has been abused many times in politically charged cases.

Before I proceed in describing the abuse of the emotional topic in political trials, it is important to note that the change in sensistivity toward this sexual abuse, and thus results in court, is only recent. The vast majority of sexual abuse is NEVER reported to law enforcement/the legal system. What I am to say below is in no way an attempt to minimize this horrific behavior or the huge challenge that the victims of it have had in obtaining redress via the legal process. I have a very close friend who works in counseling victims of sexual abuse. It is horrific and devastating, and knows no boundaries of race, class, religion or gender. I also have a daughter which gives a personal poignancy to the topic.

Because of the increased awareness of both the prevalence and depravity of these offences they became a useful tool in defamation. One can accuse an individual of sexual misconduct, particularly against children, and the damage is done before any legal proceeding begins if the media report the accusations. As I outlined above, it takes bravery to even make these allegations, and we all have a natural desire to sympathize with a victim. Should these allegations be coerced or fictional the damage to the reputation of the accused is almost irreversible, and that power is seductive to those who wish to wield power or enforce a power structure from which they benefit.

It is into this space that Mr Murray was placed; a constructed political character assassination of a former Scottish politician by the existing Scottish political power structure. To make matters worse, the power group which Mr Murray learned was orchestrating the character assassination was advocating for his political objective of Scottish independence creating a conundrum. Mr Murray's moral conclusion was that seeing the conviction of an innocent person was worse than delaying the hopefully inevitable arrival of Scottish independence. Thus, he used the contacts he had established within the UK's diplomatic service to find out who had delivered the previously unrevealed allegations to the media. Again, it comes back to media; if no publication of the case occurs before the judicial process completes then reputational damage is limited to those convicted. But here we have a delivery to media of accusations before the completion, or even beginning, of a judicial process. This has got political trial written all over it, especially if you find out that the person who delivered the previously unknown material to the media works for the leading political group in Scotland.

With this knowledge, and other background research, Mr Murray concludes that the whole thing is a political character assassination; a fit up.

Mr Murray covers the trail of the accused, Alex Salmond, on his website which has a fairly wide viewership, especially in Scotland.

The court provides anonymity to the accusers. This in itself should be an alarm. I can understand the idea behind it but it flies in the face of the idea of justice where you are able to stand before your accusers. Anonymous accusers using government prosecutors?

Just as Mr Murray had provided wonderful documentation of the show trial of his friend Julian Assange, he does similar for the fitted up Alex Salmond. He is aware of the restrictions on indentification of the accusers and never names any of them. While Mr Murray is attempting to show the trial as the fit up that it is, the general UK media is also reporting on the side of the accusers and leaking details of some of those accusers. In the end, Mr Salmond is declared not guilty of all but one charge, in which the jury declared "not enough evidence to convict". This is a rather lovely part of Scottish justice; three verdicts, not guilty, not enough evidence, or guilty.

With the trial complete, the character assassination largely performed by the media, but no conviction, the Scottish prosecution service decides the wise course of action is to indict Mr Murray with "Jig-Saw Identification". What? Yes, some little bits of some things that he published during the trial gave some people the opportunity to take those few pieces of information and, based on further research, potentially be able to identify the names of the anonymous accusers! In their filings against Mr Murray they cited twitter comments made by other persons as evidence against Mr Murray's actions. Kafka would be laughing in his grave.

Mr Murray's defense hired a company to perform a public survey of opinion as to where any possible identification of the secret accusers could have been identified. Unsurprisingly it shows the general media as the most effective in this exposure of the details of the secret accusers. This evidence, having been submitted to the court, had no effect.

Mr Murray was convicted of contempt of court solely by a judge, and none of the media outlets had to stand any charges. His sentence of 8 months in jail has been suspended for 4 weeks (now about 3) so that he can apply to the UK Supreme Court for an appeal. The last time this happened is never.

So, we have a political persecution defeated by a jury resulting in the political persecution of Mr Murray in a court without a jury. It reminds me of Julian Assange, sitting in a maximum security prison guilty of no crime for which a sentence has not already be served and waiting upon the UK High Court to decide if the appeal against his acquittal decision is just (or) a mistake.

Its a farce, all of it.