I am standing at the gates of HM Prison Belmarsh, a high security penitentiary in southeast London, with Craig Murray, British Ambassador to Uzbekistan until he was fired for exposing CIA black sites and torture centers in that country. Inside the prison, Julian Assange and Stella Moris are being married. Craig and I were on the list of the six guests invited to the wedding, but prison authorities, in an example of the institutional sadism that characterizes all prisons, denied us entry. Craig, who was to have been one of two witnesses, was informed that he could not enter because he would “endanger the security of the prison.”
Craig came down from Edinburgh by train. I flew over from New York. We would at least be at the entrance of the prison with 150 Assange supporters. Craig, dressed in full Scottish regalia —and a kilt he admitted to expanding every few years to accommodate his broadening girth — made a fashion statement and perhaps a point about Scottish independence.- He was outdone by Stella, who wore a flowing ice lilac A-line bridal gown, corset with plastic stays so she could pass through the four metal detectors, and veil designed and donated by fashion designers Vivienne Westwood and Andreas Kronthaler.
“It’s a part of the ongoing mental torture that even on his happiest day they will at the last moment strike off guests on his guest list just to mess him about, just to try and make things as unpleasant as they can possibly make them,” Craig laments. “We shouldn’t be surprised. It’s a piece of the unnecessary cruelty with which he
— source scheerpost.com | Chris Hedges | Mar 25, 2022