Submitting.
Sentencing Murray, Lady Dorrian said Murray knew there were court orders giving the women anonymity and he was “relishing” the potential disclosure of their identities.
At the virtual sentencing, Lord Justice Clerk Lady Dorrian explained that Murray deliberately risked jigsaw identification and that revealing complainers’ identities was “abhorrent”.
She said it was “particularly so, given the enormous publicity which the case in question attracted and continues to attract”.
Murray’s offending blog posts and tweets were written over a period of a month and remained up, unredacted, despite the blogger being told they could potentially lead to the identification of women who had made complaints about Mr Salmond, who was eventually acquitted of all 13 charges.
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Former Dundee University rector Craig Murray has been jailed for eight months for breaching strict rules around identifying witnesses in the the Alex Salmond trial.
Craig Murray, 62, breached a strict court order which was passed to protect women who gave evidence at the former first minister’s high court trial last year.
He had watched two days of Mr Salmond’s trial in March 2020 from the public gallery of Edinburgh’s High Court and wrote about it on his website.
By Press Association 2021
High Court in Edinburgh
Judges have been urged not to jail a former diplomat who was found to be in contempt of court after covering the Alex Salmond trial on his blog.
Craig Murray, a former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, attended two days of Mr Salmond’s trial in March 2020, sitting in the public gallery, and wrote about it on his website.
The former first minister was cleared at the High Court in Edinburgh of 13 sexual assault charges involving nine women following his trial.
Following previous hearings, judges on March 25 this year found that Murray, 62, was in contempt of court, relating to material capable of identifying four complainers.