Craig Murray: The UK Home Secretary is Lying

Here is a little antiseptic daylight on Yvette Cooper’s arguments that Palestine Action, a nonviolent, direct-action group, deserved the “terrorist” proscription that the home secretary slapped on it.

By Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org.uk

Yvette Cooper has continually lied about Palestine Action in a panicked attempt to defend the proscription of a direct action protest group which is opposing a genocide in which the home secretary’s government is deeply complicit.

Cooper and other government ministers have repeatedly claimed:

• Palestine Action attacks people, not just weapons-making equipment
• Palestine Action is funded by Iran or another hostile power
• Palestine Action attacks Jewish-owned businesses based on racism
• Palestine Action has plans for future unspecified appalling terrorist acts

In fact none of this is backed up by the assessment of the government’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre which forms the basis of the proscription of Palestine Action.

The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) is not a committee which meets occasionally, but a permanently staffed organisation with premises inside MI5 HQ in Millbank. The JTAC consists of representatives of:

MI5 — the Security Service
MI6 — the Special Intelligence Service
GCHQ — electronic and communications surveillance
DIS — the Defence Intelligence Service
Customs & Excise Special Operations
The Border Force
Metropolitan Police Counter-Terrorism Command
The Home Office
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The Ministry of Defence
The Department of Transport

Ten other ministries are included on an ad hoc basis.

All reports of the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre must be approved by consensus of all involved.

It is of course vitally important that all of these bodies are under ministerial control. The object of the exercise is to produce the result desired by ministers, i.e. proscription, justified only on available true facts and a legally tenable argument under the current legislation.

I attach the declassified version of the JTAC report, which has been “gisted” for use in court proceedings.

“Gisted” means it has gone through a process known as “sanitisation.” This means that all the key information has been retained, but in a form which protects the source.

Before I explain this to you I should explain that I once headed the FCO section of an extremely similar operation, not JTAC but ESC. The Embargo Surveillance Centre had very similar membership, was composed of almost exactly the same parties and was also primarily involved in assessing and producing reports and “action-on” from top secret intelligence.

I wrote daily gisted reports and cleared the “sanitisation” with the intelligence service representatives on a daily basis.

The purpose is to protect your source. You cannot give out information so specific that it can cause those under surveillance to say “Oh no my phone is tapped!” or worse “Wow the only person who knew that is Jimmy. He must have told them. Jimmy is an MI5 spy.”

So you have to reduce the level of information down to something that might have a more generic origin. Rather than saying “This group is planning to carry out an attack on Ladies’ Day at Ascot,” for example, you might say “This group is planning an attack in England.”

The object is to give the highest level of information the intelligence services are comfortable in giving.

That might end up being as vague as “This group plans attacks on civilians.” But that information would obviously be vital to the court and it would be given.

In fact there is nothing whatsoever in the JTAC assessment which backs up any of the claims being put out in a panic by government ministers.

The JTAC report makes absolutely clear that its assessment of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation is based only on the definition in the Terrorism Act, of a group that commits serious damage to property in order to influence government policy.

I pause here to note that the United Nations has intervened in the case to state that this does not meet international standards for defining terrorism. Damage to property should only be terrorism when the intent is to endanger life, such as damaging an air traffic control centre.

The JTAC report in fact notes that Palestine Action stresses its philosophy of non-violent action against people. Much is however made of one single attack (out of 385) where substantial violence against persons is alleged (though hotly denied).

But even here the JTAC report notes that the sledgehammer and axe were intended for use against machinery, an obvious fact.

I have blanked out a very small amount of the JTAC report which explicitly relates to this action in Bristol, because it is the subject of an upcoming trial and publication would be in contempt of court. The blanked-out sections take police allegations entirely as fact, even though they are hotly denied and subject to trial.

I have done this despite the fact that both government ministers and the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police have repeatedly made assertions about these events which are absolutely prejudicial to a fair trial, and were undeniably in contempt of court.

Equality before the law has disappeared in the U.K.

So here is the official, otherwise unvarnished  government JTAC report on Palestine Action. It makes plain that government ministers are simply lying about their information. I publish it as a journalist who has been given this document and sees an overwhelming public interest in the truth being known about a matter which has caused the arrest of some thousand people in recent weeks.

(Article continues after the report.)

• If Palestine Action deliberately attacked people
• If Palestine Action had foreign funding
• If Palestine Action attacked random Jewish businesses
• If Palestine Action planned a big terrorist act

… the JTAC report would say so. It says nothing of the sort.

Palestine Action is what it says it is: a non-violent direct action group which targets the Israeli weapons industry and its support and supply line.

It states that its actions are not terrorism but direct action to prevent genocide — and when given the chance, juries have usually sided with Palestine Action against the government.

The reason Yvette Cooper has proscribed Palestine Action is that she is a member of Labour Friends of Israel and has received £215,000 from the Zionist lobby — which is £215,000 more than Palestine Action ever received on behalf of a foreign power.

Ministers are lying to you. I have provided a little antiseptic daylight.

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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