Former Dundee University rector Craig Murray, who was sacked as Britain’s ambassador to Uzbekistan for making a stance against torture, has urged Foreign Secretary William Hague to help clear his name.
Mr Hague said allegations that British security services were complicit in the torture of suspected terrorists overseas are to be investigated.
Mr Murray applauded Mr Hague’s decision and said he wants to give evidence if the inquiry goes ahead.
He also wants the government to give him an apology or initiate an inquiry into his own dismissal in 2003 after the Foreign Office forced him out of a job for failing to toe the British line on intelligence obtained under torture.
Mr Murray said it is essential that any evidence to such an inquiry be given under oath and at risk of perjury proceedings.
“If the government’s inquiry does go ahead, and is a formal inquiry under the Inquiries Act, I shall be applying to be a core participant,” he said.
“As the only civil servant who attempted to stop the policy which the inquiry is investigating, and having been sacked for my pains, I feel I have a strong case.
“As a core participant I would have the right to counsel who could submit questions to all witnesses.
“Frankly, few are in as good a position as I to know the right questions to ask.
“Senior civil servants are pushing very hard to ensure the inquiry does not consider the general policy of torture, but only looks at individual cases of those who were tortured.”IgnoredMr Murray believed a few MI5 and MI6 junior officers would be scapegoated and compensation paid to a few victims of torture but ministerial and senior civil service direction would be ignored.
He said they also want most of the proceedings to be secret and at one stage MI6 had pushed for them to be headed by Lord Hutton.
He was the controversial Appeal Court judge who chaired the Blair government’s inquiry into circumstances surrounding the death of scientist Dr David Kelly over the Iraq weapons of mass destruction dossier episode.
Mr Murray has just published details of a letter he sent to Mr Hague where he asked for an apology.
“I believe I was the only senior official to minute his opposition to our complicity with torture and, very shortly after the events outlined in these documents, I was suspended and faced with 18 disciplinary allegations which branded me a sexual blackmailer, an alcoholic and a thief,” he said.
“I am not, and have never been, any of those things and, after a four-month investigation, was cleared on all those charges.Destroyed”But in the meantime my physical and mental health and, more dear to me, my public reputation had been destroyed.
“The only disciplinary charge on which I was convicted was that of telling people about the false charges which I had been told to keep secret but without telling people, how could I clear my name?”
Mr Murray graduated in history from Dundee and returned as rector three years ago.
He stepped down this year after deciding not to stand for another term, saying he was unable to spend enough time in Dundee.
The inquiry is expected to offer compensation in cases, where necessary, and is likely to be held in private.
A judge-led inquiry or commission may have the advantage of bringing together the 13 separate compensation cases currently going through the courts.
Mr Hague said the details of the probe, still being decided on by the coalition government, would be published “pretty soon” but declined to say whether it would take the form of a judicial inquiry.