Craig Murray, former ambassador to Uzbekistan (United Kingdom).
Transcription of his speech at " Axis fo Peace 2005 " conference in brussels, during panel discussions: " Modern forms of interference ".

I used to be the British ambassador in Uzbekistan. That was the last post in a career over 20 years in the British Diplomatic Service in which I did many interesting things. But I'm going to talk to you a little bit now about Uzbekistan, a country which is little known in the west, and I wish to make some points on that which have a much more general application about the state of the world today.
In 1997, George Bush, when he was governor of Texas, met the Uzbek ambassador, Sodiq Safaev, a meeting which was organised by Enron, by Kenneth Lay of Enron. Now, if you go on my website, you can find the letter that Kenneth Lay wrote to Georges Bush, in which he said that Enron was finalising a 2 billion dollars gas deal with Uzbekistan, and that he hoped that Bush would meat Safaev and summit a long-lasting relationship between Texas and Uzbekistan. So that was Bush's first encounter with Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan has a quite appalling regime. In May of this year, May of the 13th, they massacred about 700 pro-democracy demonstrators in the city of Andijan. And one of the appalling things about that massacre wasn't that they just opened fire on the crowd, containing a high proportion of women and children, but the people wounded were left lying in the square over night and refused medical treatment, and the next morning soldiers moved to the crowd, shooting those who were still alive in the head. Now this is a regime which had benefited of a great deal of American aid. In 2002, according to a press release from the United State embassy, Uzbekistan has received over 500 million dollars in US aid which, to give you some kind of comparison, was more that the aid that year that the United States gave to all the West Africa. On those 500 millions dollars, over 120 million dollars was in military aid and over 80 million dollars in security service aid. So those troops of security service personnel, who were shooting people in the head in Andijan were equipped, financed and trained by the United States of America. 
I happened to be in Uzbekistan day long, I've been there by 2 weeks when I received on my desk in the embassy an envelope of photographs. This came from a lady whose son had been in prison and whose body was returned to her […] in a see-old casket with instructions not to open it and to burry him on the next morning. Secretly, in the middle of the night, she opened the casket and got the body onto the table and took details photographs of the corps, and which she passed on to my office. They were appalling; I couldn't work out what had happened to these bodies, so I sent them on to the anthropology department of the University of Glasgow. They produced a report, based on the photographs, where they noted that the victim's finger nails had been pulled out, his face had been beaten, and he had been killed by immersion in boiling liquid. And this was immersion in boiling liquid, not scattering or splashing, because there was a clear tight line around the upper torso and upper limb, and 100% scalding underneath. 
Shortly after that, I obtained… Hum… I attended the trial of a dissident named [???], at which an old man had signed a confession, a witness statement, to say that 2 of the defendants, who were nephews of his, were members of Al-Qaeda and were personal associates of Osama Bin-Laden. He was giving his evidence confirming his statement - he was a very old man - and suddenly, he discovered some inner-strengthen courage. His back straightened and he said "it's not true, this evidence is not true! We are poor farmers from Andijan, what do we know about Osama Bin-Laden? I'd never heard of Osama Bin-Laden until they made me sign this statement. They tortured my children in front of me until I signed this statement." When he said that, I was less than a meter away from him, and I could tell at that moment he was telling the truth; it just came over as true. 
I used to see Intelligence Information in the Embassy which came to me. It was a source from the Uzbek security services who passed it to the CIA who would share it with MI-6. And as one of the MI-6's customers, I would see this Intelligence Information at the same time that ministers would see it in United Kingdom, for example. The object of this Intelligence Information was always to paint any political opposition in Uzbekistan as linked to Al-Qaeda, and linked to Islamic Terrorism. 
And it was largely untrue. For example, one day I got an Intelligence which talked of Islamic training camps in the hills of Samarqand and we knew, physically it was untrue, there were no training camps there. But also, in the same batch, there was another peace that talked of some dissidents traveling regularly to Afghanistan to meet, where Osama Ben Laden had been, members of Al-Qaeda.  And this was almost precisely the same information that the old man had been forced to say. And by that stage, I had realized that torture was happening in Uzbekistan on an industrial scale. There are maybe 10,000 … between 7,000 and 10,000 political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan at any moment in time, and they are almost all subject to torture. It's very unusual not to be tortured; the conviction rate in Uzbek courts is over 99% because everyone confesses in the torture chambers. And I was meeting examples of torture which were so horrible that I don't want to explain them to you. 
And I realized that this CIA information was coming from the torture chambers. So I asked my depute to speak with American embassy about this, and they received a reply from the CIA that yes, this information did come from torture, but that since September, 11th the rules had changed and the CIA didn't see this as a problem.
I did see it as a problem. I complained to London about it on numerous occasions. And - it's very long story - but the end of the story is: for my opposition to torture, I lost my job and my career in the diplomatic service.
What I didn't know at that time, but do know since, is that it's not only Uzbeks who've been tortured but that the CIA has been sending people to Uzbekistan in order to be tortured. That's why I received such an extreme reaction from my own government because I had, by accident, stumbled across the extraordinary rendition program. 
But the Intelligence coming out of it wasn't true. But the interesting thing is the Intelligence Services still found it useful. I used to say to them "but this information is untrue, it's no use to us". But in fact, true information isn't what Intelligence Services want. The information on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was entirely false, but it was still extremely useful to Tony Blair and Georges Bush. And what the Uzbek services were deducing was information which they wanted to have which categorized all the opposition to president Karimov as Al-Qaeda and that justify American intervention in the country, justify all the military assistance and training, and provided a cover for the naked pursuit of the American oil interests  which is what the policy is actually about. And that's something we can apply much wider. I think, if we look at the official justification of the American policy about the promotion of democracy, well it makes no sense whatsoever that America should be at the same time promoting and funding a dictatorship in Uzbekistan at precisely the same time it claimed to be going to war to remove a dictatorship in Iraq and in both cases, the policy was dictating by the way of getting at the oil and gas. Supporting Karimov got the oil and gas in Uzbekistan and toppling Saddam Hussein got the oil and gas in Iraq.
In the end, this American Policy failed, because for purely reasons of corruption and commercial game. Karimov eventually decided to do business with gas firm and not with the United-States oil industry. And the United-States have been removed from Uzbekistan. As a result of which the American administration has suddenly discovered that Karimov, the great friend and ally, is actually a terrible dictator. And we have seen in the last three months this incredible change of rhetoric… I was there when Donald Rumsfeld put his arm around Karimov in Tashkent and said "this man is a hero fighting for freedom". Now they say something entirely different, and I think that's just one example of the way that we should never be taking in, by the false claims of the neo-conservatives to be consistent in their support for democracy. 
So I think I have taken enough of your time at the moment and I'm very happy to discus these things further way view but I think we have to see the abandonment of a taboo against torture, the abandonment of the united-nations convention against torture which America is breaking everyday, as part of the general abandonment of the all principle of international law that led to invasion of Iraq in a world which is now dominated by global views of America interests. Thank you.