The principles of legal due process must involve justice being done and, more importantly, BEING SEEN TO BE DONE.

The current trial of former First Minister, Alex Salmond, is not being seen to be done through arbitrary, unjustified, summary and repeated exclusion of the eminent journalist, Mr Craig Murray, from the public gallery.

Mr Murray is arguably a far more ethical journalist than any 'official' journalist who has signed away their morals to a corporate employer. His presence is therefore one hundred times more important for justice to be seen to be done than any number of scribblers prostituting their services to the UK Establishment.

Firstly, the court attempted to exclude him through saying he was not 'an accredited journalist'.

Mr Murray runs one of the most successful political/philosophical blogs in Scotland and thousands have read it regularly for over 5 years. Many have stopped reading the rubbish in all the major London newspapers and now consider the BBC to be the apotheosis of anti-journalism, it being infested by security service goons and it being committed to global murder through wars of imperialism. Concerned citizens seek journalists with principles, not callous indifference to mass murder, and Mr Murray is one of our highly respected go-to sources.

Having overcome that initial hurdle allowing attendance for a few days, Mr Murray has now been arbitrarily excluded AGAIN after discussions in camera between Alex Prentice QC, Counsel for the Prosecution and the Judge, Lady Leeona Dorrian. A decision to exclude him was taken without presenting evidence to Mr Murray, not allowing him the right to hear arguments nor present counter arguments. All in all, the apotheosis of grubby little tammany hall Mayor-Daley-style politics.

Mr Murray is one of the few journalists who has actually been reporting what has occurred in court, rather than spewing propaganda according to an official 'party line'.

We the undersigned, exhort Lady Dorrian to reverse her decision to exclude Mr Murray based on a lack of evidence to justify such a decision and ask for proceedings to be instigated against Alex Prentice QC to defrock him for scurrilous, underhand, deeply disreputable practices incompatible with upholding the principles of justice in a free and fair society.

Teaching such trumped up, self-important little pipsqueaks that justice for all excludes self-serving, cowardly little snobs like him would serve a timely reminder that QCs are the least important actors in upholding the principles of a free and fair justice system in Scotland and further afield.

Ethical reporters are far more important and Mr Murray is undoubtedly one of those. 

If you believe that honest, fearless, ethical journalism is a cornerstone of a free and fair society, then sign this petition in support of Mr Murray.

If you abhor grubby little back room deals by sneaky little QCs, then sign this petition to excoriate Alex Prentice QC.

Getting Mr Murray back into the public gallery will remind Nicola Sturgeon et al that justice is of the people, by the people and for the people.

It is not of the Establishment, by the Establishment and for the Establishment.

Not in the Free and Independent Scotland that Ms Sturgeon purportedly dreams passioniately of living in, at any rate.