CIA will continue torture with help of mediators – UK’s former envoy to Uzbekistan

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CIA will continue torture with help of mediators – UK’s former envoy to Uzbekistan

By RT

CIA will continue torture with help of mediators – UK's former envoy to Uzbekistan
In 2002 Murray was appointed British ambassador to Uzbekistan at the age of 43 but dismissed in October 2004. In July 2004 he told The Guardian that “there is no point in having cocktail-party relationships with a fascist regime” Image credit: Flickr user: Vodex.Breadandcheese

Craig Murray, British ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002-2004, was fired when he revealed CIA rendition practices in Poland and Uzbekistan to UK leaders – and was branded a liar. The US torture report will hardly change the picture, he told RT.

RT: In 2004, you were fired as British ambassador to Uzbekistan after openly criticizing the UK and the US for accepting Uzbek intelligence obtained through torture. How does this new report make you feel?

Craig Murray: It is nice at last finally to have some official acceptance from the United States. But what was happening was happening. In fact, the rendition flights which went to that secret base in Poland, at Szymany, almost every single one of those flights went on and landed in Tashkent in Uzbekistan. And a number of people, whenever they finished within Szymany, were taken on to Uzbekistan. In Uzbekistan, I believe they were murdered because they have never been seen again. So it is nice to have an official admission that things happened. We still have no such admission from the United Kingdom. The UK government is still today denying its complicity with it, unlike the Polish government.

RT: Back then, it was Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and PM Tony Blair basically saying that you were inventing this stuff?

CM: They called me a liar directly. They said in parliament that I was a liar. They said there is no such thing as an extraordinary rendition program – it was a figment of my imagination, I’d invented it all, and they sacked me. I would say that today Jack Straw has been allied to deny on news programs all over the UK that it happened. They are still lying about it.

RT: Could it have been that they didn’t know?

CM: Not at all. The evidence was absolutely overwhelming. I personally sent reports of what was happening in Uzbekistan to Jack Straw, saying the CIA were getting intelligence. He definitely knew that. That was why he sacked me. There was no way they didn’t know. But the cover-ups continued. Today this is the only television interview I’m doing. Jack Straw has been allied today on all the media to say he knew nothing about it. And not the BBC, not one single UK media outlet, will allow me to say that I told them about that and I was sacked.

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