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Edinburgh, Saturday, July 31
The big story in Scotland today is the jailing of blogger Craig Murray for contempt of court in his commentary on the trial of Scotland’s former First Minister Alex Salmond, who was eventually acquitted of sex assault charges. It is the first time in 70 years that someone has been jailed for media-based contempt in Scotland, and the first time in the UK that someone has been jailed over “jigsaw identification” – although Clive Thomson was jailed for six months in February for directly naming the women.
Murray was sentenced to eight months several weeks ago but was allowed to remain with his family – his wife recently had a baby – until the result of his appeal. But the UK Supreme Court refused to hear it and now Murray plans to surrender himself at St Leonard’s Police Station in Edinburgh tomorrow – Sunday morning. There were small protests there, in Inverness and no doubt in other places, yesterday.
Scottish PEN commented: “We fear this ruling will have a chilling effect on reporting and free expression”. Reporters Sans Frontieres Director of International Campaigns and UK Bureau Director Rebecca Vincent commented – “While journalists must ensure they adhere to court orders with regard to witness protection, Craig Murray’s prison sentence on charges related to his blogging is disproportionate…Murray should be released and alternative measures considered in lieu of his prison sentence.”
Perhaps the jail is disproportionate – Murray could have been part of a high vis jacketed ‘chain gang’ collecting litter, or rebuilding Hadrian’s Wall. The Scottish courts may lack imagination – however Murray did appear to be attempting to deliberately identify the women in the case, disparagingly known by his supporters as “the Alphabetties”.
Judge Lady Dorrian said that Murray deliberately risked what is known as “jigsaw identification”, saying: “It appears from the posts and articles that he was in fact relishing the task he set himself, which was essentially to allow the identities of complainers to be discerned – which he thought was in the public interest – in a way which did not attract sanction.”
In his writing, Murray displayed a complete lack of understanding of what it might mean to be a junior civil servant in Bute House working for a powerful man – questioning why such a person would go into a room or lie on a bed simply because she was instructed to do so by her boss.
Murray has form – he named a complainer in the Julian Assange case live on British television. It is difficult to see how naming the woman would help to make any particular point. In an essay on “Sexual Violence and the Polticis of Victimhood”, Alison Phipps wrote: “For Murray, Assange was the victim of feminist misandry, allied with a right-wing witchhunt.”
She quotes Murray: “The Dominic Strauss-Kahn case and the Assange case have brought to the fore the true ugliness of sex-negative feminism and man hatred, and the extent to which they made inroads into our culture and society just as insidious as the right-wing propaganda of the Murdochs. They have also shown how those right-wing forces can so easily hijack stupid blinkered man-haters to the right-wing agenda.(Murray 2011)”
Murray is a former diplomat and was ambassador to Uzbekistan – he was subject to a gross misconduct hearing in 2004, the results of which are not public. He was suspended on full pay and has claimed that they relate to his revelations about the British Foreign Office human rights violations. He later resigned.
Murrays’ writings are quite widely read in Scotland. Arguably, the mainstream media’s obsession with the unionist agenda has contributed to a lack of trust. Murray constantly questions the official narrative on everything and looks for underlying work by the deep state – refusing to believe for example the narrative on the Skripal poisonings. At times, he has a lively and engaging style, although he is prone to rambling. Here is a quote from his blog: “The very first person to discover the Skripals ill on a park bench in Salisbury just happened to be the Chief Nurse of the British Army, who chanced to be walking past them on her way back from a birthday party. How lucky was that? The odds are about the same as the chance of my vacuum cleaner breaking down just before James Dyson knocks at my door to ask for directions. There are very few people indeed in the UK trained to give nursing care to victims of chemical weapon attack, and of all the people who might have walked past, it just happened to be the most senior of them!”
Murray’s supporters will no doubt believe that his jailing is more to do with the British state than it is to do with his deliberate attempts to identify the women in the Salmond case.