WILLIAMS: Until recently, Craig Murray was a star diplomat for the British Crown. At forty four, one of its youngest Ambassadors. Now he’s been forced from the Foreign Office and is waging a one-man war on the Blair Government, all because a posting to Uzbekistan brought him face to face with the brutality of a key ally in the west’s so-called war on terror.

MURRAY: We received photos of a corpse, a Mr Azavof, had been boiled to death. The corpse, in addition to having its fingernails removed, showed complete scalding damage to all the skin of the lower arms, legs and lower torso. I had only been a week or so in Tashkent and I didn’t feel prepared for the sheer viciousness of the brutality of the regime.

WILLIAMS: Murray says information extracted in these torture sessions is being passed to western governments.

MURRAY: Obviously there are major problems with this. It means we are receiving intelligence directly obtained by torture and also the intelligence is rubbish. It’s what the Uzbeks want us to believe and mostly it says that, you know there’s a terrific Islamic threat to the regime in Uzbekistan which is of course what justifies their dreadful repression.

WILLIAMS: When he objected he was ignored, suspended and eventually forced out of his job.

MURRAY: And remember intelligence collected under torture by the Uzbeks, passed on to MI6, that can be used to detain members of the Islamic community here.

WILLIAMS: Now he’s hitting back and running as an independent against Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in the upcoming British election. Today he’s calling at the local radio station to launch his campaign.

RADIO INTERVIEWER: So what do you know about Blackburn then?

MURRAY: Not a great deal yet. I want to raise the issue of the war against Iraq which was illegal and the specific issue that the UK now accepts intelligence material obtained under torture.

WILLIAMS: Murray says he repeatedly alerted his superiors that by accepting intelligence gained under torture, the west’s morality was, as he put it, “being sold for dross”.

MURRAY: When I first went back in November 2002 and said look America is supporting this really vicious dictatorship here and this intelligence material we’re gaining is gained under torture, maybe I was naïve but I actually thought if I brought it to Jack Straw’s attention, built it up to a high enough level, then they’d stop.

WILLIAMS: So what of Murray’s key claim that the west is receiving false intelligence on the extent of Islamic terror, intelligence obtained by torture? The truth lies here in Uzbekistan, a central Asian Republic that’s long been a battleground between ancient Islamic tradition and modern hardline repression. After weeks of negotiations, I received permission to travel here to find out.

Ruled by a soviet-style authoritarian Uzbekistan has one of the worst human rights records in the region with up to eight thousand people in prison for their beliefs, no freedom of speech and a ban on all opposition parties. Closed to most foreign journalists, gaining official access is difficult and once you’re here most people are too afraid to speak about the government’s repression of its critics from Islamic fundamentalists to secular politicians and even poets. Yet sitting in the heart of a volatile central Asia, few western governments seem willing to criticise a nation they now see as a key ally in the so-called war on terror.

Filming anything in Uzbekistan requires permission, getting testimony of state abuses means breaking away from our regular guide for meetings we had arranged from outside the country.

Down a side street of the old silk road city of Samarkand lives Professor Jamal Mirsaidov, a fearless critic of what he calls a Mafia government.

PROFESSOR MIRSAIDOV: This is not a government. It’s a monster against its own people based on ancient Mongol-Turkish brutality. When you start raising issues regarding human rights or the nation, this government will destroy you definitely.

WILLIAMS: In April 2003 then Ambassador Murray travelled to Samarkand especially to meet the professor. As a result he would soon feel the full force of government repression.

MURRAY: I left the house that evening at three o’clock but that morning, a few hours later, the body of his grandson was dumped on the doorstep. He had both knees and elbows smashed by a blunt object. The right hand had been immersed in boiling water or boiling liquid for a long period and he’d eventually been killed by a blow which caved in the back of his skull.

The lad had been killed as a warning to dissidents for meeting me, perhaps as a warning to me against meeting dissidents.

WILLIAMS: His death reinforced a terrible reality in Uzbekistan – step out of line and the secret police don’t just target you, they go for your family.

PROFESSOR MIRSAIDOV: I am in a state of deep grief, frustration but I am not angry. If you get angry with the government here it counts as suicide.

WILLIAMS: President Islam Karimov has dominated politics in Uzbekistan since the country emerged from the ruins of the old Soviet Union more than a decade ago. His authoritarian rule has kept alive many of the old habits of Soviet control. The US State Department says the people of Uzbekistan are unable to change their government peacefully, while the United Nations says Uzbekistan employs systematic torture on its opponents. But getting answers here isn’t easy. The Parliament is little more than a giant rubber stamp for the President’s dictatorship.

Akhtam Tursunnov chairs the Defence and Security Committee. He says the government has to act firmly against the very real threat of Islamic terrorism.

TURSUNOV: There are some people who think that we have to send these people involved in terrorism to resorts to have a rest and say thankyou. We have a criminal law and if anyone violates that law he has to be made responsible according to the law.

WILLIAMS: The government points to a series of bombings in Uzbekistan last year as proof the country is facing a terror threat. The Chief Prosecutor’s Office, police and the US and Israeli embassies were targets. Well over a hundred people have been arrested, six have been sentenced, yet no one has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

One group in particular, the Hiz-but-Tahrir is identified by the Government as a major front for Islamic terror. Hiz-but-Tahrir calls for an Islamic state and is banned in Germany for its anti Semitic rhetoric but it forbids the use of force, is not on the United States terror list and operates a headquarters openly in London. In Uzbekistan though, it’s a target.

TURSUNOV: This religious extremist group has found shelter in England. They portray it as freedom of expression for everyone but when they commit a terror act, then they will understand what freedom of speech is.

WILLIAMS: In the name of fighting Islamic terror, Uzbekistan has jailed thousands of members of Hiz-but-Tahrir. The problem is, many claim they are innocent and confessions are often extracted under duress.

MURRAY: Initially when arrested people are tortured into signing a confession. Then further people are tortured in order to implicate other people and this particularly applies to Muslims where they’re tortured in order to get them to say they were part of a terrorist organisation and to implicate other people in that terrorist organisation.

WILLIAMS: Confirming the extent of repression took me to a small apartment on the outskirts of the capital. This is the home and office of Surat Ikramov, one of Uzbekistan’s few surviving human rights workers. Two years ago he was bashed by government thugs. They tied a plastic bag around his head and left him for dead.

IKRAMOV: When they left me there, I felt the iron fastener of my belt under my armpits. At first I was ready to die, then I thought if I try hard maybe I could loosen the fastener.

WILLIAMS: Having cheated death, Surat has gone beyond fear and now collects a growing file of abuses in Uzbekistan’s prisons.

IKRAMOV: For example beating people on the soles of their feet with batons, inserting needles under the nails, electroshock or rape.

WILLIAMS: Officials don’t deny that torture exists in their prisons.

TURSUNOV: If there is a question whether anyone working for law enforcement agencies is committing any illegal act we have to answer yes. We are talking about it openly in our media now. We’ve started a campaign against them, a war against this type of activity.

WILLIAMS: If there is a campaign, it isn’t working. The next day I am called back to Surat’s office to meet a relative of the most recent victim of the authorities. Officials say Samandar Umarov, 35, died in jail just two months ago from a brain haemorrhage but his sister Yashmar says he was tortured almost every day for years. She blames the government for his death.

YASHMAR: It’s very difficult to bear, especially when you look at his children. If these types of people keep dying, what will happen next?

WILLIAMS: Yashmar says the government’s hardline actions against people like her brother are breeding anger.

YASHMAR: They killed one person. Now you can see how many people hate the government. Will they kill all of us?

WILLIAMS: Uzbekistan’s Government says tough tactics are needed to crush the threat of Islamic terror but the facts don’t bear that out. Many of those targeted have no connection with any Islamic groups.

Atanazar Arifov is a secular politician, leader of Uzbekistan’s biggest democratic opposition group.

ARIFOV: I have four sons. They had to go abroad.

WILLIAMS: His party is banned. He spent eight months in jail for challenging dictatorship and his four sons are in exile on pain of imprisonment or death.

ARIFOV’S GRANDDAUGHTER: Why are you wearing your hat?

ARIFOV: Because I’m cold.

WILLIAMS: His granddaughter and daughter-in-law can’t join one of his sons, the Government refuses them an exit visa. This he says is the cost of being a democrat in one of America’s allies in the war on terror.

ARIFOV: [To Granddaughter] They’re filming us because they want to show it to daddy. [To Williams] America is very well aware of events going on in Uzbekistan and they know better than us that torture exists.

WILLIAMS: Activists believe this is one of the reasons why top US officials remain silent on Uzbekistan’s abuses. Just one month after September the 11th Washington was given permission to use this old Soviet Airbase in southern Uzbekistan to support operations just across the border in Afghanistan.

AMERICAN ARMY COLONEL: This is a map of the area of responsibility that encompasses or defines Operation Enduring Freedom.

WILLIAMS: From here US military flights can reach from Russia to Iran, it’s long-term strategic value undeniable.

IKRAMOV: I have to say that one year after this co-operation started the American government changed its mind about the state of human rights in Uzbekistan. America started paying less attention to it. I could even say this attention disappeared completely.

WILLIAMS: Many in Uzbekistan wait for any western leader to condemn injustice here, injustice that’s known to fuel global jihad.

ARIFOV: The suppression of the secular democratic opposition is one of the conditions which led to the evolution and spread of religious extremism.

WILLIAMS: It’s now also claimed that US agents have been flying captured and kidnapped Al Qaeda suspects into Uzbekistan for interrogation. In the world of intelligence it’s called “rendition” to the rest of the world it’s a guaranteed plane trip to torture.

MURRAY: I know that the Americans have brought people back to Uzbekistan from Bagram Airport in order to be interrogated and that those people have been brought back by the Americans, on American planes with American personnel.

WILLIAMS: Murray says there’s no doubt western intelligence knows the information it’s getting is gained under torture, as Ambassador he sent an Embassy official to the US mission in Tashkent to make sure.

MURRAY: She reported back to me that the CIA Chief there said yes, you’re right. I guess this material would have been obtained under torture. You know it’s strange, I never thought about that as a problem before.

WILLIAMS: Having been forced out of Uzbekistan and of his career by the Foreign Office, Craig Murray is now hard at work on the campaign trail back home.

MURRAY: (TO AUDIENCE) You wont find MI6 agents in any country where you can’t buy a cappuccino.

WILLIAMS: This is a gathering of Muslim financial workers in London.

MURRAY: (TO AUDIENCE) It’s extremely dangerous to have a beard in Uzbekistan.

WILLIAMS: The electorate he’s contesting has one of the biggest Muslim populations in the United Kingdom and Murray’s message is that many of those who die in Uzbek prisons are being tortured to confess they are Muslim militants.

As the campaign gains pace, Murray is still reeling from the way he says the Foreign Office turned on him for breaking diplomatic ranks and going public.

MURRAY: So then they started contacting the media, telling people I was an alcoholic, telling people I was offering visas in exchange for sex and brought up these amazing allegations against me as formal charges which were then dropped.

WILLIAMS: Britain’s Foreign Office says Murray was withdrawn because he could no longer perform the full range of duties required in relations with Uzbekistan. In a carefully worded statement, it says government agencies oppose torture and would never instigate others to use torture but it does not refute the charge that it accepts intelligence from Uzbekistan where torture is known to be used.

Murray knows he’s unlikely to win a seat here in Westminster but for him it’s more about spreading the message, that the west is paying too high a price for bad intelligence on Islamic fundamentalism.

MURRAY: Torture breeds hatred, ill-treatment, repression breeds hatred and because of our short-sighted policy in central Asia, that hatred is directed not just at Karimov but at the west who is seen as his close supporters so really we’re creating terrorism. In the future this is going to come back and hit us and we are creating the terrorism that we claim we are fighting.