{"id":58866,"date":"2021-08-02T06:52:41","date_gmt":"2021-08-02T11:52:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58866"},"modified":"2021-08-02T06:52:41","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T11:52:41","slug":"craig-murrays-jailing-is-the-latest-move-in-a-battle-to-snuff-out-independent-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58866","title":{"rendered":"Craig Murray\u2019s jailing is the latest move in a battle to snuff out independent journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"headline_area\">\n<h3 class=\"headline\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2021-07-30\/craig-murrays-jailing-is-the-latest-move-in-the-battle-to-snuff-out-independent-journalism\/\">Craig Murray\u2019s jailing is the latest move in a battle to snuff out independent journalism<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"headline\">Craig Murray, a former ambassador to Uzbekistan, the father of a newborn child, a man in very poor health and one who has no prior convictions, will have to hand himself over to the Scottish police on Sunday morning. He becomes the first person ever to be imprisoned on the obscure and vaguely defined charge of \u201cjigsaw identification\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"post_content\">\n<p>Murray is also the first person to be jailed in Britain for contempt of court for their journalism in half a century \u2013 a period when such different legal and moral values prevailed that the British establishment had only just ended the prosecution of \u201chomosexuals\u201d and the jailing of women for having abortions.<\/p>\n<div class=\"twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered\"><iframe id=\"twitter-widget-0\" class=\"\" title=\"Twitter Tweet\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/embed\/Tweet.html?dnt=true&amp;embedId=twitter-widget-0&amp;features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3NwYWNlX2NhcmQiOnsiYnVja2V0Ijoib2ZmIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&amp;frame=false&amp;hideCard=false&amp;hideThread=false&amp;id=1420803858406723594&amp;lang=en&amp;origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jonathan-cook.net%2Fblog%2F2021-07-30%2Fcraig-murrays-jailing-is-the-latest-move-in-the-battle-to-snuff-out-independent-journalism%2F&amp;sessionId=41631e458f13b655c14f9b5c1b8b44724c8c8048&amp;siteScreenName=Jonathan_K_Cook&amp;theme=light&amp;widgetsVersion=e9dfb5f%3A1627539779275&amp;width=500px\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-tweet-id=\"1420803858406723594\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Murray\u2019s imprisonment for eight months by Lady Dorrian, Scotland\u2019s second most senior judge, is of course based entirely on a keen reading of Scottish law rather than evidence of the Scottish and London political establishments seeking revenge on the former diplomat. And the UK supreme court\u2019s refusal on Thursday to hear Murray\u2019s appeal despite many\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dissenter.substack.com\/p\/craig-murray-8-months-prison-sentence\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">glaring legal anomalies<\/a>\u00a0in the case, thereby paving his path to jail, is equally rooted in a strict application of the law, and not influenced in any way by political considerations.<\/p>\n<p>Murray\u2019s jailing has nothing to do with the fact that he embarrassed the British state in the early 2000s by becoming that rarest of things: a whistleblowing diplomat. He exposed the British government\u2019s collusion, along with the US, in Uzbekistan\u2019s torture regime.<\/p>\n<p>His jailing also has nothing to do with the fact that Murray has embarrassed the British state more recently by reporting the woeful and continuing\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2021-01-04\/assange-wins-the-cost-press-freedom-is-crushed-and-dissent-labelled-mental-illness\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">legal abuses<\/a> in a London courtroom as Washington seeks to extradite Wikileaks\u2019 founder, Julian Assange, and lock him away for life in a maximum security prison&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Craig Murray\u2019s jailing is the latest move in a battle to snuff out independent journalism Craig Murray, a former ambassador to Uzbekistan, the father of a newborn child, a man in very poor health and one who has no prior convictions, will have to hand himself over to the Scottish police on Sunday morning. He [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[14160,379,17165,462,28902],"class_list":["post-58866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-craig-murray","tag-government","tag-jonathan-cook","tag-journalism","tag-legal-system"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58867,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58866\/revisions\/58867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}