Julian Assange: The whistleblower's whistleblower

Kevin Gosztols of the Fire Dog Lake Dissenter writes that Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan  and a whistleblower, delivered a speech in support of WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange just before Assange gave his speech from the balcony of the Ecuador embassy in London.


He highlighted how WikiLeaks had not only shined a light on the illegal war in Iraq but also revealed “individual war crimes carried out withing that war.”


“I blew the whistle on torture and extraordinary rendition and the collusion of the CIA and MI6. I was in consequence immediately charged with extortion for sexual purposes and blackmailing people into sex in exchange for British visas.”


He said it took him one and a half years to clear his name of those charges because “they routinely charge and try to beat up whistleblowers and that is what is happening to Julian Assange just as it happened to me.”


He mentioned the case of Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who blew the whistle on the fact that “she had seen documents signed personally” by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld authorizing torture at Abu Ghraib. The “very next day” she was charged with shoplifting.


Whistleblowers or dissidents are always “immediately charged with offensives which don’t relate to whistleblowing at all … dissidents are not charged with political offenses. They are fitted up with criminal offenses.”

Click here to read more: http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/08/19/former-british-ambassador-craig-murray-we-need-whistleblowers-now-more-than-ever/ 

WikiLeaks.


Julian Assange Update 14 April 2013