# 18 British Embassy destroys David Fletcher's passport - containing evidence that he was not in Cambodia at the time of the alleged rapes!

The Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s admission that it destroyed Mr Fletcher’s passport, knowing that it contained evidence pertinent to his assertion that he was not in Cambodia at the time of the alleged rapes, was received by him less than 48 hours before his hearing on 27^th Oct.”

Phillip Hammond

Foreign Secretary

Parliamentary House of Commons

London

SW1A                                                                                                            

22nd October 2014

Dear Mr Hammond

re David John Fletcher

It is now only five days until Mr. Fletcher is due to appear at a hearing in the Phnom Penh Municipal court. As both he and I have made clear on many occasions, this 27^th Oct hearing may well be Mr Fletcher’s last opportunity to present evidence in his own defense. His passport or, to be more precise, its contents, comprise vital evidence.

Either Sue Bennett and Conor Doherty have decided, of their own volition, to be as obstructive as possible regarding the fate of Mr Fletcher’s passport or they have been instructed to be so by someone higher up in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office – perhaps Ambassador Mark Kent?

Regardless of who is issuing such instructions to Sue Bennett and Conor Doherty, it is your responsibility as Foreign Minister to see to it that Mr Fletcher’s questions (identical to my own) are answered and that he has information from either Foreign & Commonwealth Office or yourself that can be presented to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on 27^th Oct.

Given the sheer volume of obfuscation and spin emanating from Sue Bennett and Conor Doherty it is necessary to deal with it in some detail. See below.

Some introductory observations:

- I am not advocating on Mr Fletcher’s behalf. I am simply a member of the public who happens to be a filmmaker. I discovered, in the course of researching a film that has nothing to do with Mr Fletcher,  that Yang Dany was a virgin after she had allegedly been raped by him. This set alarm bells ringing.

- When Yang Dany herself (along with her mother) admitted that no rape had taken place, (recorded on my camera) I arrived at the conclusion that Mr Fletcher was entitled to fair trial. This right, under Cambodian law, is one that has not been extended to him to date. Mr Fletcher has spent four and a half years in jail.

- In my conversations with him I became aware that Mr Fletcher’s passport was a key piece of evidence. At first I found Mr Fletcher’s story about the disappearance of his passport, whilst in the care of the British Embassy, difficult to believe.  However, given Sue Bennett’s and Conor Doherty’s responses to requests for simple information I now believe that Mr Fletcher has told me the truth about his passport – namely that the British Embassy in Thailand, knowing that the passport contained evidence vital to his defense, made sure that it disappeared.  There are reasons why  certain members of British Embassy staff might wish to see to it that Mr Fletcher’s passport disappeared but they are not relevant to my current enquiry.

- The details of how the passport was ‘accidentally cancelled’ and then ‘accidentally destroyed’ change from one telling to the next so it is impossible to know where the truth lies. Hence the importance of honest answers to the questions I asked of Mr Kent on 14^th September:

http://cambodia440.blogspot.com/2014/10/4-how-did-british-embassy-in-thailand.html

- Mr Fletcher also requires copies of all documents (emails, letters, notes) relating to the passage of his passport from ‘notorial staff’, through British embassy and Foreign & Commonwealth Office procedures until its destruction. These documents have been requested in accordance with Freedom of Information legislation and no logical reason has been given as to why they could not be produced within the time frame indicated in the legislation.

- Conor Doherty has suggested, one week before Mr Fletcher’s hearing, that information regarding his movements in and out of Cambodia in March 2009 be obtained from the Cambodian Ministry of Immigration. Please find attached a copy of the letter I wrote to the Department on 13^th Sept. I hand delivered the letter to the Ministry of the Interior. The offices at the Department of Immigration were largely deserted at 10 am. But I did manage to leave the letter with a woman who assured me that it would be passed on to the Minister. I have received no response. In 19 years of visiting Cambodia I have written many letters such as this. On only one occasion have I received a response. It seems to me highly unlikely (a) that the Department of Immigration will have information regarding Mr Fletcher’s travels in March 2009 on file in a readily accessed form and (b) that the Department will provide answers to my questions in the next two days. (The FCO has, or should have, details of Mr Fletcher’s movements in march 2009 on file.)

- Regardless of which version of the story of how Mr Fletcher’s passport managed to disappear off the face of the earth is true, there can be no doubt that the FCO is responsible and not Mr Fletcher. And the Phnom Penh Municipal court needs to know this. Mr Fletcher’s simple assertion, in court, that the British Embassy in Thailand accidentally cancelled and then destroyed his passport is not going to carry any weight at all. Indeed, if I were a judge, I would not believe such an assertion. Such things simply do not happen within British embassies!

- Given the importance of the information contained in Mr Fletcher’s passport to his defense it is imperative that you, as Foreign Minister, write a letter to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court explaining that he is unable to present such evidence owing to an ‘accident’ within the FCO or whichever of the stories you are happy to put your name to.

- I think that nothing further needs to be added to the comments I made to Sue Bennett in my letter to her of 20^th October. Clearly, she had been instructed by someone higher up in the FCO hierarchy to apply whatever spin she was capable of to fob off both Mr Fletcher and myself. (Sue is not, alas, skilled in the art of bureaucratic spin!)

- Given the speed with which Conor Doherty responded to my letter (though sending his response to Mr. Fletcher!) my guess is that it is Conor who has been instructing Sue to be as obstructive as possible. Perhaps Conor has done so of his own volition but I suspect that Conor himself is acting on instructions – most likely from Ambassador Mark Kent, who is likewise acting on instruction from…and so on up the line to your own desk. A US President once had a sign on his desk which read:  “The buck stops here.”

-  In this matter, Mr Hammond, the buck stops with you. No more spin doctors. No more fanciful versions of what happened to Mr Fletcher’s passport. Mr Fletcher and I want to get answers to the questions I outlined to Mr Kent in my letter of 14^th September. And we want to get, through FOI legislation, copies of all letters, emails and other forms of communication that took place within FCO from the time Ray Keen brandished Mr Fletcher’s passport in a prison cell to the time it was ’accidentally destroyed’ in the United Kingdom. This information is not only relevant to Mr Fletcher’s legal defense in Cambodia but to civil action he intends to take against FCO in relation to its complicity in his being falsely charged with rape and then denied access to evidence in support of his innocence. The circumstantial evidence points overwhelmingly to FCO complicity but whether such complicity has occurred (as opposed to a common and garden cock-up) is not up to me to decide, of course, but to be decided in a properly constituted court of law in the United Kingdom.

Till recently, Foreign Minister, you could claim with some justification, that you knew nothing of this matter. Such ‘plausible deniability’ is no longer an option. You must either tell Ambassador Mark Kent and Conor Doherty to answer questions and hand over the materials requested or accept full responsibility for the FCO having deliberately withheld evidence vital to Mr Fletcher’s defense.

I will add here a personal note relating to the possible consequences of your handing this letter off to a spin doctor to deal with.

When I first met Mr Fletcher he was more than two weeks into a fast which he was prepared to carry through to his own death. When I managed to uncover evidence strongly suggestive of Mr Fletcher’s innocence and stepped over the line from being a filmmaker to being a human being concerned to see justice done, Mr Fletcher could see some light at the end of the tunnel and ceased his fast.

A few days ago Mr Fletcher wrote the following to me. It is very personal and I am sure that he would not want me to be passing it on to the FCO. However, given how high the stakes are, I am not even going to ask Mr Fletcher’s permission before including the relevant paragraph here:

“I cannot express and thank you enough for all you are doing to extract the truth of this nightmare. You have my full confidence in searching out the truth.

When we met, as you know I was on hunger strike. I had reached the end of my patience, not depressed, but just had enough of everything over the last four and half years. It was my intention to look as ill as possible. I did not intend to go through pain and I wanted it to look as if I had died through a heart attack. I have enough morphine to take out two elephants, so I could make it look good. It is still my intention to leave in a civilised manner.

I am being honest with you, as I always have and always will be. The two most important things to me are you have now thankfully proved my innocence for my good loyal friends and supporters. The fact you have shown I have not let them down is paramount to me.  Now you can show the world of my innocence if I am here or not. I can now have some kind of peace. One way or another I am not staying here much longer and frankly after talking with M (Khmer lawyer), I have no hope of freedom. I thank you so much for your untiring work.”

Leaving aside my role as filmmaker, as a human being I do not wish to look back with any regret that there was something I did not do, that I could have done, to prevent Mr Fletcher from taking his own life.

I will now deal, in some detail, with Conor Doherty’s email to Mr Fletcher dated 20^th Oct.

Conor Doherty writes:

“The Embassy came into possession of your passport when it was sent to notarial staff without covering information to indicate that it belonged to a British national currently in detention.”

This is quite a different story to the one that has been in play this past couple of years – in which Ray Keen told David Fletcher that the embassy would take care of his passport. When he was preparing to return to the UK in Jan 2013, Mr Fletcher asked Ray Keen to return his passport. Keen told Fletcher that unfortunately his passport had been cancelled ‘by accident’. Fletcher asked Keen to return his passport as it contained evidence of his March 2009 movements. Keen told Fletcher that his passport had been ‘accidentally destroyed’. Fletcher asked Keen to put this in writing. A few weeks later Fletcher received a letter from Tanida Apivisuttrux dated 21^st Feb in which Mr Apivisuttrux wrote:

“…since your passport was cancelled due to the Embassy’s mistake, if you are leaving Thailand before the expired date of your previous passport, which was 13 June 2013, you will not have to pay for your emergency travel document…”

There is no mention in this letter of Mr Apivisuttrux’s that Fletcher’s passport had been ‘accidentally destroyed’ but clear evidence that the British embassy acknowledged its responsibility for the cancellation.

Had Mr Fletcher’s passport been destroyed back in the UK as of 21st Feb 2013? On what date was the passport (a) sent back to the UK and (b) destroyed?

The version of the story just outlined has been superseded by Conor, so let’s deal with that:

- Who sent Mr Fletcher’s passport to the British Embassy’s ‘notorial staff’? Thai officials? Which Thai government department? The police? The courts? On what date?

- That it was a valid British passport that had arrived on the desk of ‘notorial staff’ would have been blindingly obvious. If there was no covering note, surely these ‘notorial staff’ would have done one or more of the following:

(a) Ask the person to whom they were answerable within the embassy who David Fletcher was and why his valid passport had arrived on their desk.

(b) Ask the person to whom they were answerable what they should do with this valid  passport.

(c) Type the words ‘David Fletcher’ into the embassy computer and discover, no doubt, that Mr Flwetcher was currently in detention in a Thai jail.

At this point, I am sure, the ‘notorial staff’ would have asked the person to whom they were answerable what they should now do with the still valid passport. Surely, there are procedures and protocols that govern what happens to passports moving around within a British embassy? Passports do not simply float around the embassy, do they, landing in this desk or that for no apparent reason and with no explanation? Surely each and every stage of the passport’s passage through the system, these days, is recorded on a computer! Is this so? If so, there must be a complete record of the various stages Mr Fletcher’s passport went through from the time it came into the possession of the embassy until the time it was destroyed?

Who are these ‘notorial staff’ who, without reference to anyone within the embassy, send valid passports back to the UK? In a diplomatic pouch, I presume?  And there will be a record of what was in the pouch on the day it was sent.

I am presuming that the ‘notorial staff’ were Thai nationals. Why? Because one of Mark Kent and Conor Doherty’s fallback positions could then be, if this story unraveled (as it has), “Unfortunately these ‘notorial staff’, Thai nationals, no longer work for the British Embassy and whilst it is unfortunate that they made an error in judgement…etc.”

On what date, following this particular story thread, did Ambassador Kent become aware that Mr Fletcher’s passport had been sent back to the UK by accident? Before or after it had been ‘destroyed’ in the UK? Given that Mr Fletcher’s passport should never have been sent back to the UK, there must surely have been some kind of internal investigation at the very least into how this cockup occurred? Could you please supply David Fletcher with a copy of this report?

If I am right in making the presumption I have about ‘notarial staff’ being Thai nations, what is one to make of Conor Doherty’s next statement:

“…notarial staff then followed the procedure for recovered/returned passports and sent your passport to Her Majesty’s Passport Office (HMPO) in the UK for cancellation.”

So, a valid passport with no covering note attached to it arrives on the desk of a Thai national working for the embassy and he or she, with no reference to anyone else within the embassy, apparently answerable to nobody, decides to send it back to the UK?

Mr Hammond, this does not pass the laugh test. British bureaucracy does not work this way. These ‘notorial staff’ would not have made a decision to return a valid passport to the UK without first asking Mr Blewett, Mr Doherty, Mr Kent or someone higher up in the embassy hierarchy what the appropriate course of action to take should be in relation to Mr Fletcher’s passport. A valid passport!

That Mr Kent, Mr Blewett, Mr Doherty and others within the embassy had no idea Mr Fletcher’s passport had left the embassy and Thailand beggars belief.

This is, of course, the story that the British Embassy must stick with come hell or high water.  “The ‘notorial staff’ are to blame.” The alternative story is one that is just too horrible for Ambassador Kent, Conor Doherty et all to contemplate as it can only end in one or more employees within the embassy being sacked for either incompetence or conspiring to pervert the course of justice. (In this ‘Age of Terror’ allowing a Thai national to take control of the fate of a passport, with no oversight on the part of anyone in senior management within the embassy, is incompetence of the worst kind.)

The alternative story is that Mr Kent, Mr Blewett, Mr Doherty and others within the embassy knew that Mr Fletcher’s valid passport was leaving Thailand; that Mr Fletcher would not have access to it. Moreover, because Mr Kent, Mr Blewett, Mr Doherty and others within the embassy knew that Mr Fletcher claimed not to be have been in Cambodia at the time of the alleged rapes (March 2009), they knew that evidence in support or Mr Fletcher’s innocence was leaving the country, soon to be destroyed.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Mr Kent, Mr Blewett, Mr Doherty and others within the embassy were conspiring to pervert the course of justice and to deny Mr Fletcher evidence in defense of his innocence.

If there is a logical explanation for how Mr Kent, Mr Blewett, Mr Doherty and others within the embassy could be oblivious to the departure from Thailand of Mr Fletcher’s passport, I would certainly like to hear it. And, Mr Hammond, I think that you need to ask that this explanation be provided to you today so that you can, today, write whatever face-saving letter you must to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court explaining that Mr Fletcher is not lying when he claims that the British Embassy is responsible for his inability to present this particular evidence in his defense.

The ‘notorial staff’ sending it back to the UK by mistake story simply does not pass the laugh test and I will be very surprised if you, as Foreign Minister, will put your signiature to a letter declaring that this is a true and fair account of how Mr Fletcher’s passport disappeared.

But let’s just presume, for a moment, that Mr Kent, Mr Blewett, Mr Doherty and others within the embassy are totally incompetent; that they really did not know what was going on with passports within the British Embassy in Thailand; that ‘notorial staff’ made decision off their own bat to cancel passports. (A host of questions arise!)

So, somewhere in an FCO office in the UK, an FCO employee finds him/herself with a valid British passport with, presumably, a note attached to it from Thai Embassy ‘notorial staff’. What does this note say? Who signed the note?  Who gave ‘notorial staff’ the OK to send the passport back to the UK?

The person with Mr Fletcher’s passport in his or her hands is now tasked with destroying it so it is logical to presume that the person who signed/sent the note attached to the passport had the authority to cancel/destroy a valid British passport. Do ‘notorial staff’ have such authority?  I think not!

On what date was Mr Fletcher’s passport destroyed? And is it true that no photocopies were made of the pages of his passport relevant to his court case before it was destroyed.

The questions multiply, Mr Hammond, but the time for answers is brief. Without some substantial explanation from yourself, without copies of the relevant pages, Mr Fletcher will have to stand up in court on 27^th Oct and make an assertion about the fate of his passport that the judges will (as I would) find difficult to believe.

yours sincerely

James Ricketson

Less than 48 hours before Mr Fletcher is due to appear in court, Conor Doherty makes the following generous offer on behalf of Foreign Secretary, Mr Phillip Hammond:

“If it would be useful for you to confirm with another party that this passport is not available, as it was cancelled and destroyed by the British authorities, we can write to confirm this.

Please let me or my colleagues at the British Embassy in Phnom Penh know and we can issue a letter to this effect.”

Kind regards

Conor