An eight-month prison sentence imposed on a blogger for breaching a court order in the Alex Salmond trial is disproportionate, according to Michael Russell, president of the SNP.
Craig Murray, a former British diplomat, is expected to hand himself in to police in Edinburgh this morning after the Supreme Court rejected an appeal to review his sentence.
Murray, 62, was given the prison term in May after judges ruled that he was in contempt of court for publishing details that, when pieced together, threatened to reveal the identities of the women who had alleged sexual harassment against Salmond, the former first minister.
Russell said that although Murray was guilty, and wilfully so, of a damaging offence — given the importance of protecting those involved and ensuring that complainants were not deterred by such actions — the sentence seemed disproportionate.
On Friday Murray said that he was “slightly stunned” by the prospect of going to prison. “Nobody has been jailed for contempt in the UK for over 50 years, despite plenty of complaints,” he said. He faces 23 hours a day “in a cramped cell with a stranger”. Yesterday he tweeted: “I have to hand myself in at St Leonards Police Station Edinburgh on Sunday morning to go to jail. I don’t want it to be sad and I should be delighted if anyone wants to come along with a little snack brunch and a glass of bubbly to toast me off. St Leonards Police Station 10.30am.”
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Murray said he was worried about how his wife and two young sons would cope in his absence. He admitted to a “lingering concern” that he would not be allowed to take his own books to jail, where he plans to continue work on a biography of George Murray, the Jacobite military commander.
Throughout Salmond’s trial last year Murray blogged about the case and alleged that the SNP leadership, the Scottish government, the Crown Office and police conspired to convict Salmond on charges of sexual harassment and attempted rape. Salmond was cleared of all the charges.
While his supporters regard Murray as a defender of freedom of speech and a cause célèbre, critics view him as a conspiracy theorist and the author of his own misfortune. They believe he not only broke the law but persisted in publishing material despite warnings that he could face prosecution.
Murray insists that he was acutely aware of the danger of “jigsaw identification”, adding: “If I had wanted to give identities, I could have done so, but it wasn’t what I was trying to do.” He rejects the label of conspiracy theorist but firmly believes that he is a political prisoner.
“The problem with the world is there are conspiracies,” he said. “The idea that they don’t happen is ridiculous. As an ambassador I have seen the establishment from the inside, the workings of GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 with millions in their budgets — what kind of things do you think they are doing?
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“The hands of the British state are all over this. The roots of it were a political conspiracy against Alex Salmond, to destroy both his reputation and career, and why, because he was a threat to the British state, one of the biggest threats in 300 years who had taken the country to the brink of independence.”