Our Man in Tashkent

Craig Murray is about to be played by Steve Coogan in a new film by Michael Winterbottom. The controversial ex UK ambassador to Uzbekistan has been an outspoken critic of human rights abuses there and of western support for the Karimov administration.

After 20 years in the service of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Mr Murray was dismissed in 2004. This followed the leak of a secret memo he had written in which serious doubts, raised about the wisdom of US and British policy in Uzbekistan, had become public. In his recently published memoirs “Murder in Samarkand - a British Ambassador’s Controversial Defiance of Tyranny in the War on Terror”, Mr Murray exposes human rights abuses, such as the use of torture, as commonplace in Uzbekistan. Here, in a public talk, he tells of life as he discovered it to be in Uzbekistan, and why he personally took the stand that he did. Length 18 mins.

For more details visit www.craigmurray.co.uk