Craig Murray: UK Hypocrisy on Its Arrests of Journalists

By rebuking the U.N. for its legitimate interest in cases involving U.K. citizens while throwing open the door to Israel, the Starmer regime has gone beyond Orwell or Kafka.

By Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org.uk

There is a stunning contrast between the access given by the U.K. to the Israeli embassy to influence prosecutions of anti-genocide journalists and protestors, and the repudiation by the U.K. of United Nations querying such prosecutions.

The U.K. has rebuked the U.N. for “outside interference.” 

I cannot state enough how unusual it is for the U.K. to give direct access to the Israeli embassy to the Police and the Crown Prosecution Service, in order for the Israeli government to influence the prosecution of U.K. citizens.

This is not about extradition, in which case there may be treaty arrangements for direct contact between prosecutors. It is just not normal nor right for an embassy to be involved with domestic prosecutions in this way.

This is one of a series of heavily redacted emails seen by The Guardian, Middle East Eye and lawyers for Palestine Action.

They show the Israeli government being granted direct influence with U.K. police and prosecutors, to urge the prosecution of U.K. citizens protesting in the U.K. against a genocide for which Israel stands accused at the International Court of Justice, with her leaders indicted before the International Criminal Court.

There is no British precedent for this situation and it is very much against international practice, although comparators may be found in influencing prosecution decisions in Vichy France by Nazi Germany or the Eastern European communist bloc by the Soviet Union — though there were instances of pushback even there.

By contrast the U.K. system is openly influenced by the Israelis.

There is no reticence from the U.K. government in forwarding Israel influence. Although all released correspondence has been heavily redacted, it is plain that individual cases have been discussed with the Israelis, including those of Palestine Action.

The United Nations has written to the U.K. on the subject of its treatment both of pro-Palestinian protestors and journalists and the abuse of anti-terrorism legislation. It is almost certain that some of the same cases the U.N. cites are those the Israeli embassy has been involved in.

The contrast between the U.K.’s treatment of the Israelis and of the United Nations could scarcely be different: The Israelis are invited in, while the Starmer regime has repudiated the United Nations.

This is stunning hypocrisy. It is characterised as being in the interest of those being persecuted by the U.K. and Israel to prevent “interference from international organisations” such as the United Nations.

This is beyond the pen of George Orwell or Franz Kafka. You can imagine the authors sniggering as they wrote it.

But the truth is the exact opposite of the U.K. government line. Unlike the Israeli embassy, the United Nations really does have a right to interfere.

The Special Procedures mechanisms by which the United Nations approached the U.K. are a well-established part of international law, and the U.K. is a party to them. These are instituted by the Human Rights Council, and it has always been the position of the U.K. that all nations are subject to them.

In addition the U.K. is since 1971 a full party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which is monitored by the Human Rights Committee and to the provisions of which the U.N. special rapporteurs specifically referred in querying the U.K.’s actions in this matter.

So the Israel embassy has no right to interfere, and the United Nations has a direct right to interfere; yet the U.K. has encouraged the illegitimate while repudiating the legitimate.

This is a classic example of the way that Zionism has fundamentally poisoned public institutions in the U.K., and also of the profound Zionist capture of New Labour.

[Related: Medhurst Case: Test of a Turning Tide on Gaza]

This week’s revelation that Foreign Minister David Lammy has lied to Parliament and the country about suspending trade talks with Israel, while U.K. “trade envoy” Lord Austin is actually there, should be no surprise.

Greetings from Israel!

I’m here to meet businesses & officials to promote trade with the UK.

Trade with Israel provides many thousands of good jobs in the UK and brings people together in the great multi-cultural democracy that is Israel.

Read this:https://t.co/adJDRtUFgb https://t.co/Rh7DMKFU1j

— Ian Austin (@LordIanAustin) May 27, 2025

The hypocrisy does not even end there.

The U.K. has been the most vociferous of countries in weaponising the U.N. Special Procedures against its own designated enemies, such as Russia and China.

For the U.K. now to repudiate these U.N. investigations of itself as “interference” is precisely to adopt the position of those states it has long argued against.

I have no doubt that this has been duly noted by any dictatorship the U.K. may seek to criticise in future.

You will recall that I am among a number of journalists about whose detention under the Terrorism Act and the seizure of whose electronic equipment, and thus correspondence, the United Nations interrogate the U.K.  You can read the U.K. government reply in full here. 

Since the U.N. wrote, there have been further high-profile arrests of journalists, including Sarah Wilkinson and Asa Winstanley. The basic U.K. response is that the U.N. should not interfere, but one point of detail the U.K. states is particularly worth noting.

Detentions and confiscations such as mine under the Terrorism Act specifically do not require the police to have any “reasonable grounds of suspicion.”

What kind of state makes a point of empowering its police to act unreasonably?

But read this further from the U.K. government reply:

I was detained and my electronics seized under Section 7. That means the U.K. government is claiming that I was “concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.” Just digest that for a moment.

I might say that nothing in my questioning — which was roughly equally split between the subjects of WikiLeaks and Palestine — related in any way to the potential commission of any acts of terrorism.

Is the government really pretending that, in travelling home from an Assange campaign meeting in Iceland, they truly suspected I was preparing to commit terrorism?

This is ludicrous.

It has often been noticed that despite Sarah Wilkinson, Asa Winstanley, Richard Medhurst, Johanna Ross, John Laughland, Vanessa Beeley, Kit Klarenberg, Ernest Moret, Richard Barnard, Tony Greenstein and Natalie Strecker all being swept up under the Terrorism Act in a campaign against journalists this last two years, there has never been a single mention in U.K. mainstream media of the U.K.’s arrest of journalists under the Terrorism Act.

Even following the United Nations intervention to question the U.K. on the arrest of journalists the U.K. did not mention it. Even the U.K.’s tiny number of licensed anti-genocide voices in the mainstream media, such as Owen Jones, have never mentioned it.

[See: The Chris Hedges Report: The West as Israel’s Police]

This week Asa Winstanley won an important legal victory at the Old Bailey where a senior judge ruled that the police raid on his home and seizure of his equipment was unlawful.

That is an important and rare legal victory, and I am tempted to attribute it partly to the turning of the tide of Establishment opinion against sacrificing all principles of law to the interests of Israel.

You may perhaps not be surprised to learn that this victory, too, has not been covered by the mainstream media. This conspiracy of silence over extreme abuse of police power against journalists is deeply troubling.

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.

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This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk.

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