Mogul
10-15-2004, 07:04 PM
Ex-Envoy Hits Back in Uzbekistan 'Torture' Row
By Jude Sheerin, Scottish Press Association
Britain’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan today accused the Foreign Office of trying to “fit him up” for speaking out about torture in the former Soviet republic.
Craig Murray, 45, said his employers had concocted a list of “extraordinary” charges against him after he blew the whistle on human rights abuses.
The Scot, who has courted controversy ever since being appointed to the embassy in Tashkent in the central Asian country in 2002, lost his job earlier this week.
He was recalled after details emerged of a furious memo he had sent to the Foreign Office, complaining that MI6 was using information passed on to it by the CIA but originally obtained in Uzbek torture cells.
As well as being morally and legally wrong, the practice was unreliable because prisoners under torture could be expected to say whatever their tormentors wanted to hear, he warned.
And he wrote: “We are selling our souls for dross.”
the rest you can read here: http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3631880
By Jude Sheerin, Scottish Press Association
Britain’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan today accused the Foreign Office of trying to “fit him up” for speaking out about torture in the former Soviet republic.
Craig Murray, 45, said his employers had concocted a list of “extraordinary” charges against him after he blew the whistle on human rights abuses.
The Scot, who has courted controversy ever since being appointed to the embassy in Tashkent in the central Asian country in 2002, lost his job earlier this week.
He was recalled after details emerged of a furious memo he had sent to the Foreign Office, complaining that MI6 was using information passed on to it by the CIA but originally obtained in Uzbek torture cells.
As well as being morally and legally wrong, the practice was unreliable because prisoners under torture could be expected to say whatever their tormentors wanted to hear, he warned.
And he wrote: “We are selling our souls for dross.”
the rest you can read here: http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3631880