Exactly. UK is a democracy with a pretty good justice system that follows the law, so I was very surprised to read so negative comments about the outcome of the case.
Do I feel sorry for the person - yes, but breaking any injunction from court has extremely predictable outcome! I'm thinking it could have gone way worse than the 8 months in prison for him, especially if he were in any other country (including USA).
Sad to see this unfold, but extremely predictable outcome of breaking a court injection... courts take very dim view of it!
Craig Murray is basically a decent guy. He fell out with the British government when he was ambassador to Uzbekistam and broke protocol by protesting about the treatement of Uzbeks by their government - being boiled to death etc. He was subsequently bullied, disciplined and dismissed from his post for acting with humanity and integrity. I think he was traumatised and experienced something akin to a psychotic break, after which he saw conspiracies everywhere in officaldom. I used to follow his blog and it was a mixture of reasonable analysis and unsubstantiated consipiracy theories. In this case, he was clearly in the wrong - he is a blogger with a big following, and he posted material in breach of the injunction. This is why the authorities went for him: (1) breaking a court order, and (2) potentially identifying a sexual assault plaintive. In the UK the authorities don't muck around if you behave like that. This is why he is in prison.
> He fell out with the British government when he was ambassador to Uzbekistam and broke protocol by protesting about the treatement of Uzbeks by their government
Sovereign nation states have no morals or ethics, they have interests. To represent these interests to other sovereign nation states, they have ambassadors. So, for ambassadors, "acting with humanity and integrity" when that is not conducive to their nation's interests is a grave dereliction of duty. (Not saying this is a nice state of affairs, but if even I know that's how the world works, how could he not know? Also not saying acceding to Uzbek human rights abuses actually is in Britain's best interests; only that apparently the establishment in Britain thought so.)
> I used to follow his blog and it was a mixture of reasonable analysis and unsubstantiated consipiracy theories.
If he's "a decent guy", he should have known he wasn't cut out to be an ambassador and should never have taken the job. The more I read about him, the more it seems his problem is that he's just simply pretty damn stupid. Weird, one wouldn't have thought jobs like ambassador routinely get offered to stupid people.
> [O]ne wouldn't have thought jobs like ambassador routinely get offered to stupid people.
One would be wrong, then. Ambassadorial appointments to countries of little geopolitical significance are often used as favors for political supporters, particularly the "more money than sense" sort.
In other cases, where the country only presents diplomatic downsides (IOW, the best-case scenario is "nothing newsworthy going on"), it can be difficult to get anyone to accept what amounts to a hot-potato appointment, especially if they are smart.
> Exactly. UK is a democracy with a pretty good justice system that follows the law
The UK is a 500-year-old monarchy which somehow absorbed democratic representation. Which is the reason the Queen, to this day, still has privileges like being able to oversee draft legislation and ensure her possession are exempted from it - something that was confirmed this week, coincidentally, in Scottish matters.
This also means the UK system is absolutely ridden with obsolete and fundamentally anti-democratic devices, that occasionally rear their ugly head. Like when the Snowden revelations first emerged, and some GCHQ goons showed up at the offices of a newspaper (the Guardian), ensuring all computers that had touched related info were smashed to pieces. Or the fact that there are multiple parties in the Parliament, but only two of them are admitted to the Privy Council and receive security briefs. Or, well, the cesspool of corruption and wealth that is the House of Lords (want a seat? Just pay the party in power, you'll be in by next Christmas). And of course, the City of London - a constitutional abomination by any reasonable standard, in the third millennium, but still firmly at the very heart of the capital.
Knowing all this, you'd be less surprised that people might think the system is corrupt. Because, well, it fundamentally is.
Do I feel sorry for the person - yes, but breaking any injunction from court has extremely predictable outcome! I'm thinking it could have gone way worse than the 8 months in prison for him, especially if he were in any other country (including USA).
Sad to see this unfold, but extremely predictable outcome of breaking a court injection... courts take very dim view of it!