In the recent UK general election, Craig Murray stood as candidate against Jack Straw in the Blackburn constituency. Murray was attempting to bring about public debate and public knowledge of Straw's alleged complicity in Uzbek CIA torture. Straw retained his seat with 17,562 votes (42\%), while Murray came fifth with 2,082 votes (5\%). Craig Murray was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan in 2002 and 2003. A career diplomat, Murray had a good record of success behind him, but was withdrawn from Uzbekistan after he publicly decried the widespread use of torture in that country. He was quoted in the Financial Times as claiming the MI6 used intelligence gained by the Uzbek authorities by torture. Two months before the UK election Channel Four premiered the program "Torture:The Dirty Business" which showed that the Uzbekistan government routinely uses torture to interrogate prisoners. It showed that CIA had sent prisoners to that country to be tortured in a procedure known as rendition . The program alleged that UK's MI5 received information obtained by torture. The Foreign Office released a statement to the program claiming that they would never do anything to encourage torture, but that it would be "irresponsible" to rule out the use of any information received from a foreign government if such information could help protect British citizens. In the same program Craig Murray stated that after he raised objections to the use of information extracted under torture, his superiors informed him that Jack Straw had personally authorised the policy.
In the recent UK general election, stood as candidate against in the constituency. Murray was attempting to bring about public debate and public knowledge of Straw's alleged complicity in Uzbek torture. Straw retained his seat with 17,562 votes (42\%), while Murray came fifth with 2,082 votes (5\%). Craig Murray was British Ambassador to in 2002 and 2003. A career diplomat, Murray had a good record of success behind him, but was withdrawn from Uzbekistan after he publicly decried the widespread use of torture in that country. He was quoted in the as claiming the used intelligence gained by the Uzbek authorities by torture. Two months before the UK election premiered the program "Torture:The Dirty Business" which showed that the Uzbekistan government routinely uses torture to interrogate prisoners. It showed that CIA had sent prisoners to that country to be tortured in a procedure known as . The program alleged that UK's received information obtained by torture. The Foreign Office released a statement to the program claiming that they would never do anything to encourage torture, but that it would be "irresponsible" to rule out the use of any information received from a foreign government if such information could help protect British citizens. In the same program Craig Murray stated that after he raised objections to the use of information extracted under torture, his superiors informed him that Jack Straw had personally authorised the policy.
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Craig Murray
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Jack Straw in the Blackburn
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CIA
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Uzbekistan
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Financial Times
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MI6
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Channel Four
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rendition
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MI5