# 43 David Fletcher decides to end his life

Phillip Hammond

Foreign Secretary

Parliamentary House of Commons

London SW1A                                                                                   

21^st  November 2014

Dear Mr Hammond

As you know by now, the judges in the Phnom Penh Municipal Court reversed their decision of three weeks ago to allow Mr Fletcher a re-trial. The circumstances surrounding this can be found, in brief, at:

http://cambodia440.blogspot.com/2014/11/41-david-fletcher-denied-re-trial.html

And some of the key questions that no-one, including the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, wants to ask regarding the facts of the case are to be found at:

http://cambodia440.blogspot.com/2014/11/42-some-questions-for-mr-samleang-siela.html

I have just returned from visiting David Fletcher in jail. He has calmly informed me that he intends to end his life. He does not wish to receive any visits from the British Embassy in Phnom Penh and give you and the FCO the opportunity to be able to place on record that the Embassy is offering him ‘consular support’. He wishes to die with as much dignity as possible under the circumstances.

The FCO has had ample opportunity this past four and a half years to provide ‘consular support’. However, whilst the FCO’s duty of care applies to consular staff who are sworn at, it does not extend to British citizens who have been charged with raping a young woman whose hymen managed to remain intact. Indeed, with the willful destruction of a key piece of evidence in this case – Mr Fletcher’s passport – Ambassador Mark Kent and other senior officials within FCO are complicit in the perversion of justice that has destroyed Mr Fletcher’s life.

Mr Fletcher has asked me to continue with my efforts to clear his name of the charges laid against him. I will do so.

With the power of attorney vested in me by David Fletcher please accept this letter as yet another formal request that Sue Bennett forward to me all of the documents that Mr Fletcher has asked for through Freedom of Information legislation in relation to the fate of his passport and which Sue Bennett informed me she had in her possession on 6^th October 2014

yours sincerely

James Ricketson

This is an extract from the medical report prepared for the Phnom Penh Municipal Court in September 2010 - 3 months after David Fletcher's arrest in Thailand. The report makes clear that Yang Dany's hymen was intact; that she was a virgin. The judges decided, in the secret trial, that Yang Dany's hymen must have grown back.