Hazel Blears Lies to Parliament about MI 6 - again

Craig Murray, the ex-Ambassador to Uzbekistan wishes to bring to public attention , yet more dishonesty and lies from Home Office Minister Hazel Blears ;

"On 13 October the House of Commons (Hansard Col 467 et.seq.) debated new government anti-terrorist measures being rushed through the house, including the proscription of 15 terrorist organisations. There was little time for debate and no opportunity to vote individually on which organisations should be banned.

Below are edited extracts from the debate, in which Liberal, Labour, Conservative and Plaid Cymru MPs all expressed reservations about the inclusion of an alleged Uzbek terrorist group, the Islamic Jihad Union, in the list of banned organisations.
In answering their concerns, Hazel Blears, Home Office Minister, gave one seriously misleading explanation, and one straightforward lie.

Blears trotted out the Uzbek government version of a series of violent incidents in Uzbekistan in March 2004. In fact the alleged string of suicide bombings do not appear to have been anything of the kind. I visited the site of each of the bombings within a few hours, or in one case minutes, of the alleged explosion.

The physical evidence on the ground did not coincide with the official explanation. For example, each suicide bomber was alleged to be using explosives equivalent to 2kg of TNT. But nowhere, not even at the site of an alleged car bomb, was there a crater, or even a crack in a paving stone. In one small triangular courtyard area a bomb had allegedly killed six policemen. But windows on all sides, at between ten and thirty metres from the alleged blast, were not damaged. A tree in the middle of the yard was not damaged also. The body of one of the alleged suicide bombers was unmarked, save for a small burn about the size of a walnut on her stomach.

A full account of my investigations of these bombings appears in my book, which is one reason the FCO will seek to block publication. There is no more reason to believe the Uzbek government version of events in March 2004 than to believe the Uzbek government version of the Andizhan massacre. What is more, as Ambassador I sent back the detail of my investigation to London, and the Joint Terrorism Assessment Centre (JTAC) agreed with my view that there were serious flaws in the Uzbek government account – and agreed with my view that the US were wrong to accept it. I concluded then, and still believe now, that these events were a combination of a series of extra-judicial killings covered by a highly controlled and limited agent provocateur operation.

Why then is this Uzbek government propaganda now being uncritically relayed to the House of Commons by Hazel Blears?

Where Hazel Blears lies outright is in assuring MPs that the information on the IJU is from our own sources. There was no intelligence material from UK sources on the above events. The UK has no intelligence assets in Central Asia. We are dependent on information given to us by the United States’ CIA and NSA. There was information from the NSA on the above events. We had NSA communications intercepts of senior Al-Qaida figures asking each other if anyone knew what was happening on Tashkent (no-one did). Despite the only intelligence we had indicating plainly that Al-Qaida were not involved, Colin Powell immediately went on the record in Washington to support their ally Karimov, stating specifically that Uzbekistan was under attack from Islamic militant forces linked to Al-Qaida.

Almost certainly MI6 and MI5 happily accept this rubbish analysis, as it suits their own agenda. But to pretend that they have independent information is a lie.

I am greatly concerned that Ministers are prepared so easily and uncritically to push a security service agenda. I am sad but far from astonished that they are so cavalier with assurances to MPs. It is worth noting that the instincts and suspicions of these MPs were absolutely spot on – they are to be commended.

I am not, in a practical sense, concerned by the proscription of the Islamic Jihad Union. The evidence that this organisation exists at all is extremely tenuous, and if it does it is almost certainly the fruit of an Uzbek agent provocateur operation. I am greatly concerned by the glib repetition of Karimov propaganda by British ministers."

Go to the Hansard report for full details of the debate.


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