Craig Murray - Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan

In 2002 Murray was appointed British ambassador to Uzbekistan at the relatively young age of 43. He was dismissed from that post in October 2004. In July 2004 he told The Guardian that "there is no point in having cocktail-party relationships with a fascist regime", and that "you don't have to be a pompous old fart to be an ambassador".

In October 2002 Murray made a speech at a human rights conference hosted by Freedom House in Tashkent in which he asserted that "Uzbekistan is not a functioning democracy" and that the boiling to death of two members of Hizb ut-Tahrir "is not an isolated incident". Later, Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan confronted Uzbek President Islam Karimov with Murray's claims.

Murray was summoned to the FCO in London and on 8 March 2003 was reprimanded for writing in a letter to his employers, in response to a speech by President of the United States George W. Bush, "when it comes to the Karimov regime, systematic torture and rape appear to be treated as peccadilloes, not to affect the relationship and to be downplayed in the international fora ... I hope that once the present crisis is over we will make plain to the US at senior level our serious concern over their policy in Uzbekistan".