>Voormalig Brits ambassadeur in Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, werd door zijn baas, minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Jack Straw, uit zijn functie ontheven, nadat hij mensenrechtenschendingen in de Uzbeekse “war on terror” aan de kaak stelde.

Om informatie te vergaren over terrorisme werden verdachten stelselmatig gemarteld. Zie deze aflevering van Netwerk voor achtergronden over dit onderwerp.

Op zijn eigen weblog uit Murray (rechts op de foto), zoals veel meer kritische geesten, zijn twijfels over de wèrkelijke toedracht van de arrestaties in de transatlantische “liquid-terror“-zaak, waarover de afgelopen week zoveel ophef was in de media en de politiek.

Het begint als volgt:

The UK Terror plot: what’s really going on?

I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine.

So this, I believe, is the true story.

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn’t be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year – like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes – which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn’t give is the truth. Lees verder

• 9/11: Martial Law, Loose Change 2, Confronting the Evidence op lokale TV
• “Liquid terror”: Plane attack was not imminent: official
• Terreuralarm!