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Craig Murray documents - The media catches on *UPDATED*

Posted July 11th, 2006 by Davide Simonetti
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The mainstream media is starting to report on the Government's threat to sue Craig Murray for breach of copyright for publishing on his website documents which support the claims made in his book 'Murder in Samarkand'. By now these documents have been mirrored on numerous websites around the world. The first UK national newspaper to report the story is The Guardian.

Mr Murray has posted full texts of all passages the Foreign Office ordered deleted from the book version of Murder in Samarkand, the former Tashkent ambassador's account of alleged British complicity in torture by the despotic Uzbekistan regime. His book contains links to the website.

The passages detail CIA intelligence reports that Mr Murray says were false, and accounts of US National Security Agency intercepts and conversations with John Herbst, the US ambassador in Uzbekistan at the time. The Foreign Office says release of the material is damaging.

[...]

Mr Murray said yesterday: "If the media do not react to this, they will lose the ability to report in any detail material released under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents in question are the supporting evidence for my book. The government continues to claim my story is untrue."

[...]

Lawyers say Mr Murray would be able to argue a defence of public interest for his own non-commercial disclosures, as would the media if quoting from the government documents on his website while reporting on current news events.

So the Government's tactic of using the Crown Copyright Laws to silence Mr Murray seems likely to fail, and by now it will be pretty much impossible to shut down the growing number of sites mirroring the documents (although the spooks may still try). Anyone care to guess what the Government's next move will be?

*UPDATE*

John Lettice from The Register has written an interesting piece about how the blogosphere has risen to the occasion.

Ominously from the FCO's point of view, this time around the disputed documents have also been made available via P2P networks and as Bittorrents. This makes it practically impossible for the FCO to stop distribution, even if if it were sufficiently aggressive (and rash) to attempt to suppress all copies within UK jurisdiction.

And the South Korean Oh My News also covers the story very well and mentions the efforts of Blairwatch, Dahr Jamail and The Register.

My guess is that when the

On July 11th, 2006 Antipholus Papps (not verified) says:

My guess is that when the heat gets too much, Blair will declare a state of emergency and assume the dictatorial powers given to him by the Civil Contingencies Act.

In case you are not aware, I

On July 11th, 2006 Sabretache (not verified) says:

In case you are not aware, I am giving this extensive coverage on my blogg too. Also in discussion @ it on a number of US lists. And BTW, thanks for the Emails to the NO2ID list - v useful.