Can anybody explain why there is an injustice here? Almost every comment I see here in his favour gives no reason why this is unjust.
Craig has been a thorn in the side of the government for some time, first for exposing corruption in the Scottish seats of power, the too-cozy relationships between the judicial and executive branches, and the biased and tainted prosecutions of anyone who gets in their way (including MPs).
The accusations against him hinge on the "jigsaw identification" theory, whereby people could piece together persons from the material he published. The problem is that it's so vague that it could be used against *anyone* who publishes *anything* about a case such as this (and in fact many publications DID publish information that could easily lead to the identification of the accuser, but they were given a pass). This is why he's calling it retribution.
Furthermore, he's been reporting on the Assange case, and that has angered the British government, which is why his appeal was rejected, and why he was not allowed to travel to Spain to give testimony in a case where the Americans were spying on Assange and his lawyer via UC Global.
At this point, Craig's only remaining option is to appeal to the EU court of human rights, but that's gonna be a tough one because he's pissed off the Americans too much with the Assange case.
Does the EU Court of Human Rights care whar Americans think about him?
Personally, I think he's just doing it to have a record for posterity once it's rejected, to turn common knowledge about EU-USA corrupting power relationships into public knowledge (although I don't share his hope that this will ever become public knowledge - but then again it takes an idealist to fight these kinds of battles).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Court_of_Human_Rights
A. The opinion of a world superpower with a military to match
B. Ideals
It's hard to connect contempt of the court proceedings with pissing off the government without also alleging that courts are in the pocket of the government... which is a very serious connection to draw here. This happened in UK!
For me, it's far too loosely defined and requires supposition of Intenet (mind reading) , to be used as a means of conviction.
Or is it that all of the identity data that someone can be held legally accounted for are precisely defined?
Related story: when I was the deputy editor of a paper in a large UK city I was read in on the approximate locations of people known to be on our patch who were subjects of injunctions protecting their identities, just so that we didn’t accidentally reveal anything that could expose their whereabouts when reporting seemingly unconnected events such as house fires etc.
The interests of the state and those of the courts almost completely align. Class interests in the UK really matter and the rulers (not the members of parliament, the actual rulers) and the judges all went to the same schools, they are all cousins essentially.
There is no need for explicit corruption and collusion but there is plenty of that too.
Whilst not impossible, this is entirely speculation.
Have you read the court ruling on the matter? I looked through it, and it sounds like that's not at all what's going on here. The court went through each individual accusation of jigsaw identification he was accused of, and in cases where jigsaw identification was unlikely, said so. On top of that, it seems Murray himself was trying to hint to his readers that he was indeed trying to give information out for the purpose of helping people figure out who the accusers were.
>Craig's only remaining option is to appeal to the EU court of human rights, but that's gonna be a tough one because he's pissed off the Americans too much with the Assange case.
Perhaps. Or perhaps he just doesn't have a very strong case.
Appeals aren’t rejected by the government.
>How I genuinely do not know who I am supposed to have identified or which phrases I published are said to have identified them, in combination with [details] in the public domain.
How on earth is that open and shut?
Open and shut would be if he published the names, which nobody claims that he did.
Conveniently it is also impossible to verify if the crime was actually committed without naming the individuals. All that is required to convict is one judge's say so.
If you were to pick a convenient politically motivated prosecution this ranks up there with navalny skipping bail by dint of being in a coma.
>> How I genuinely do not know who I am supposed to have identified or which phrases I published are said to have identified them, in combination with [details] in the public domain.
> How on earth is that open and shut?
I don't see how those statements have any bearing on whether the case is "open and shut" or not. You're quoting the defendant, who's almost certainly going to come up with some argument for their own innocence no matter how strong the case is.
He also chose to fight this case, so if he didn't want to undermine it, his only option besides arguing for his innocence was silence.
I haven't even seen a coherent rebuttal yet. I'm not sure it's even possible, given that the evidence in this trial would, conveniently, have to be kept secret - automatically ensuring by default it couldnt be open and shut.
Far from being open and shut it actually stinks to high heaven.
This guy claims he read the original posts and was able to identify one of the complainants from the information there:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28009316
But my point was mainly the Murray is so obviously biased that his statements need to be read with that in mind. Plus denials like "I do not know" and "I don't recall" are some of the vaguest and least credible (since they're almost impossible to prove or disprove).
I mean, it could for instance be the case that he obviously and incontrovertibly did it, but is just too utterly stupid to realise it -- then "I genuinely do not know" would still be true. But just as ignorance of the law is no defense, I don't think stupidity is either. "But your Honour, I didn't know she'd die if I cut off her head, so I can't be guilty of murder!" Too fucking bad, you should have known that.
No, coz in that case we would know the identities of all these women. The only ones named didnt come from his blog they came from a guy who actually tweeted them and was sentenced, IIRC, to 6 months rather than Craig's 8.
I would agree with you, except his prison sentence is only 8 months. If this was some corrupt hit job, they could have easily put him in prison for decades.
Julian Assange, who hasn't even been convicted AFAIK, has been kept in solitary in a maximum-security prison while only being accused, falsely it turns out, of non-violent crimes. The reasonableness of the entire punishment must be taken into account, not just the duration.
I agree, and I am not arguing that the treatment of Craig Murray has been reasonable. I am arguing that, if this was a larger conspiracy against him, his prison sentence would be much longer.
I doubt it's possible to put somebody away for 20 years for what he supposedly did.
He should have taken down the blog posts, but instead doubled down.
Hard to see whence your outrage originates.
I believe the outrage originates from believing that he should not have been told to shut-up in the first place.
The rape and sexual assault complainers had their anonymity protected by court order. That's completely normal (in the UK anyway).
Craig Murray's not a martyr. He's an eejit.
Supposedly their claims were also without basis, so he was sentenced to prison for maybe possibly according to one judge maybe revealing the identities of somebody making a false claim of rape in a case that was itself likely politically motivated.
So, nothing fishy about any of that then.
Publishing somebody's name isn't the only way to deanonymise them.
> false claim of rape
This is a dangerously incorrect take, and it's completely unsubstantiated.
"Could" have doxxed them? The newspapers are "understandably vague"?
How does that align with this being an open and shut case?
Especially it's a law that hasnt been used for 70 years applied against a well known dissident.
That's an open and shut contempt, and courts do not play silly buggers with people who think that if they're very clever orders don't apply to them. Even given that the crown (the Scottish government, who were prosecuting Salmon and made the contempt of court complaint) are out to get Murray, that doesn't make him a martyr, it makes him an idiot.
[0]: https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/docs/default-source/cos-genera...
Now one could argue that it was inadvisable to leave it up after the order, but that is a different matter.
The court seems to disagree.
Even if that was true, jailing for media contempt is very very rare in U.K. and the timing given his involvement with Wikileaks case is suspect.
> The applicant describes himself as a “journalist in new media”. Whatever that may involve, it is relevant to distinguish his position from that of the mainstream press, which is regulated, and subject to codes of practice and ethics in a way in which those writing as the applicant does are not. To the extent that the submissions for the applicant make comparisons with other press contempts, and the role of mainstream journalists, this is a factor which should be recognised.
[0] https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/docs/default-source/cos-genera...
"The code is more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/the-sun-and-d...
If he's guilty of it we of course do not see the evidence--posting the evidence would amount to the same crime that he was convicted of.
Either he has already leaked and the name is out there and his 8 month sentence is justified then it shouldn't matter that we can discuss or he has kind of "leaked" but no one really knows anything so we shouldn't have access to the evidence in which case this ruling and sentence is not warranted it cannot be both right ?
The supreme court refused to hear his appeal on the basis that new media is different from traditional media, that doesn't seem right. Supreme courts are there to take novel new cases and set precedence on how the laws are to be interpreted. Drawing that distinction and not taking the case to define how such media for contempt has to be handled does not add up.
The impact is beyond just this sentence, it affects lot of journalism on how contempt laws work. In U.K. media freedom (when it comes to courts) is already not great with stuff like super injunctions. This kind of vague ruling without clearly defining what is the kind of mistake me made that is illegal does not help.
Now. You and I don't have the posts, because I assume they've been deleted. That makes it hard if we want to second guess the judges. But Murray has them, and the court also does. And frankly the import of the ruling is straightforward for journalists to follow, too: don't publish information that could identify rape complainants in breach of a court order. Which is routine for court reporters, frankly.
And FWIW a superinjunction is particularly easy to follow - don't publish anything about the injunction or the underlying matter. Is that reasonable? In my view no. I think they should never have been created. But they aren't unclear, just Draconian. And they don't apply in the criminal jurisdiction, or in Scotland, so I'm not sure they're very relevant here.
I am specifically talking about page 3 point 4
> [4] The applicant describes himself as a “journalist in new media”. Whatever that may
> involve, it is relevant to distinguish his position from that of the mainstream press, which is
> regulated, and subject to codes of practice and ethics in a way in which those writing as the
> applicant does are not.
The other point is so called "jigsawing clause" is very vague because it is not explicit on how much lee way there is for interpretation. Think about it, depending on how much you already know, any information or reporting about some event can be used to glean who the person behind is it. There has to be well defined rules for something like this as it can otherwise be used prosecute any reporter/journalist at a whim . As compared to say "Not naming someone" is clear unambiguous rule to follow
[1] https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/docs/default-source/cos-genera...
Yes, U.K. courts are not in general prosecuting for media contempt ( first case in 50 years?). Relying on the discretion of the court not to prosecute is not the same as having precedence on what extent a report can be interpreted as jigsawing a injunction. "Journalists" (the appeal seems to regard him as second class one at best) shouldn't depend on that fact that courts generally will not prosecute them, Shouldn't they know with some certainty when they are in the clear ?
[1] The problem is this is a subjective interpretation, I should also know it the same as the justice would do to make sure I am on the right side of the law ? This was later replaced by Miller test and that established some guidelines to go by.
In summary: "not an accident, in any way shape or form".
It wasn't general "how to figure things out", but more "if I write these three riddles I'm not specifically saying person A and person B's names, and therefore I'm not in contempt".
The court took a dim view of that.
Well, judges aren't stupid. I guess he's finding out the hard way.
... and then he wrote a Yes Minister-esque fanfic which fairly bluntly painted very direct "clues" to those identities, and then told his readers "read this carefully and you'll get those identities", and then acted shocked when the court didn't say "Damn you, Craig, you foiled and outsmarted us!", but instead "Posting 'nudge nudge wink wink' hints to people is effectively the same thing. You know it, because you told people that's what it was, and we know it. So we're treating it the same".
Do I feel sorry for the person - yes, but breaking any injunction from court has extremely predictable outcome! I'm thinking it could have gone way worse than the 8 months in prison for him, especially if he were in any other country (including USA).
Sad to see this unfold, but extremely predictable outcome of breaking a court injection... courts take very dim view of it!
His actual record as a "journalist" is not great (his reporting on the Skripal assassins a particular lowlight).
Sovereign nation states have no morals or ethics, they have interests. To represent these interests to other sovereign nation states, they have ambassadors. So, for ambassadors, "acting with humanity and integrity" when that is not conducive to their nation's interests is a grave dereliction of duty. (Not saying this is a nice state of affairs, but if even I know that's how the world works, how could he not know? Also not saying acceding to Uzbek human rights abuses actually is in Britain's best interests; only that apparently the establishment in Britain thought so.)
> I used to follow his blog and it was a mixture of reasonable analysis and unsubstantiated consipiracy theories.
If he's "a decent guy", he should have known he wasn't cut out to be an ambassador and should never have taken the job. The more I read about him, the more it seems his problem is that he's just simply pretty damn stupid. Weird, one wouldn't have thought jobs like ambassador routinely get offered to stupid people.
One would be wrong, then. Ambassadorial appointments to countries of little geopolitical significance are often used as favors for political supporters, particularly the "more money than sense" sort.
In other cases, where the country only presents diplomatic downsides (IOW, the best-case scenario is "nothing newsworthy going on"), it can be difficult to get anyone to accept what amounts to a hot-potato appointment, especially if they are smart.
The UK is a 500-year-old monarchy which somehow absorbed democratic representation. Which is the reason the Queen, to this day, still has privileges like being able to oversee draft legislation and ensure her possession are exempted from it - something that was confirmed this week, coincidentally, in Scottish matters.
This also means the UK system is absolutely ridden with obsolete and fundamentally anti-democratic devices, that occasionally rear their ugly head. Like when the Snowden revelations first emerged, and some GCHQ goons showed up at the offices of a newspaper (the Guardian), ensuring all computers that had touched related info were smashed to pieces. Or the fact that there are multiple parties in the Parliament, but only two of them are admitted to the Privy Council and receive security briefs. Or, well, the cesspool of corruption and wealth that is the House of Lords (want a seat? Just pay the party in power, you'll be in by next Christmas). And of course, the City of London - a constitutional abomination by any reasonable standard, in the third millennium, but still firmly at the very heart of the capital.
Knowing all this, you'd be less surprised that people might think the system is corrupt. Because, well, it fundamentally is.
I am far from an unbiased source on this – I'm personally aghast that anybody would take Craig Murray seriously.
But trying to be a little objective, I expect that this effect is primarily because of an instinct we all have to ignore the flaws in people who are saying things we think are important.
Murray is popular here for his commentary on the Assange trial. He is virtually certain to be correct in some of his accusations about Assange's treatment, and in a community that values freedom of speech and the rights of whistleblowers that is a stance that attracts attention and support. Given this, it could be tempting for some to assume that his imprisonment was a deliberate action to silence a troublemaker – particularly when the defendant himself makes that argument.
On the other hand, it's also totally feasible that someone with views you support is also entirely seperately capable of doing dumb things and getting themselves arrested.
I paid quite a bit of attention to the case in question. His level of obfuscation was a bawhair away from 'cartoon rat Ricky Raus', and he requested everyone read "very, very carefully indeed. Between the lines." It seemed quite obvious to me what he was trying to do, and a subsequent conviction isn't really surprising – nor does it require thinking about it in terms of a conspiracy theory. It just seems strange to me to assume a state-motivated conspiracy when there's a much simpler answer right there – regardless of whether or not you agree with the particular details of the case, or his views in general!
I guess maybe it's sometimes hard to separate out the views that we agree with from the harsh realities of flawed individuals.
I'd like to see some more specific details so I could form my own view, or at least hear the view of a disinterested third party that's seen the relevant posts.
He didn't name anyone, but at the time I thought he provided more than enough information to identify one one of the complainants. Although I'm not au fait with the SNP there were details about situations, people, and roles that seemed more than specific enough for people to work out.
I don't think it was deliberate, and he is probably ignorant about how easy it can be to de-anonymise people. However he should have been more sensitive to these issues.
The timing (he cannot now testify in the Spanish case on spying on Wikileaks) and quantum of sentence combined with supreme court refusing to hear his appeal all does not indicate the system had the best interests for protecting the witness but more like they wanted to silence him/ media and send a message .
These were both in England, which may explain the 50 year thing.
Edit: actually I'm wrong, the article says:
"Murray is the first person in the U.K. to be incarcerated for media contempt in over a half century."
If we restrict it to what 'media' might mean I suppose Tommy Robinson was freed on appeal. And a Mail journalist got away with a suspended sentence.
There is only European court left for Murray to appeal. The supreme court refused hear his case.
It's true that the judge can't publicly state "Look, the third sentence in paragraph four at this URL gives the victim's initials, a week later in paragraph seven he said the complainant worked in such-and-such government agency, and here he tweeted that it was the individual's 47th birthday. There is only one person who fits these fingerprints, and their identity is obvious to anyone with a passing familiarity of that individual." That would invite everyone else to go read paragraph four, paragraph seven, and the tweet, and to search out this secret. Or more likely, that the individual is named directly and repeatedly in the post, and Craig named them because their name and their involvement is on public documents, but that they've decided that he's not allowed to name them.
But you'd expect them to explain that reasoning behind closed doors, and then to more publicly deny his rebuttal, unless there is no such individual.
Regardless of what he's done otherwise, it seems pretty clear he was in the wrong here.
This is the best description of what it was all about from the persepctive of Craig Murray.
In contrast, several newspapers have reported information which revealed the identity of one or more accusers, but were not prosecuted.