David Fletcher claims that he was not in
Cambodia at the time of the alleged rapes – 15th and 22nd
March 2009. The only evidence of this that stood any chance of standing up in a
Cambodian court was to be found in Mr Fletcher’s passport.
Ambassador Mark Kent of the British Embassy
in Bangkok, knowing this to be the case, destroyed Mr Fletcher’s passport and
hence evidence of his innocence.
The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office
has now provided two different explanations as to why and how Mr Fletcher’s valid
passport came to be cancelled and then destroyed. In one version it was a
‘mistake’ and in the other, in accordance with standard Embassy protocols.
Neither version of what happened to the passport withstands close scrutiny.
Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond refuses
to answer any questions at all in relation to Mr Fletcher’s passport. And
Freedom of Information requests for documents relating to the fate of Mr
Fletcher’s passport have been turned down.
On 17th Nov, three weeks after
judges in the Phnom Penh Municipal Court promised Mr Fletcher a ‘re-trial’ they
reversed their decision and said that he was not entitled to one because the
paperwork was not delivered to the court in time.
The woman David Fletcher allegedly raped,
Yang Dany, was sent out of Cambodia by the NGO (Action Pour Les Enfants) so
that she would not available for cross-examination, had their been a trial, and
not available to speak with the media. She has sent to China by APLE but there
is a suggestion, pure speculation at this point, that she has been trafficked
to China.
How many other men are in jail as a result
of allegations as demonstrably false as those leveled at David Fletcher
perpetrated by APLE? And why is it that the British Embassy provides financial
support to a non government organization engaged in the pursuit, persecution and
prosecution of innocent men in order to keep up a high arrest and incarceration
rate?
David Fletcher was on day 21 of a hunger
strike on the day I met him. He saw a glimmer of hope when I began to advocate
on his behalf in September 2014 but that hope has evaporated. He has been
abandoned by the British government and abandoned by human rights organizations
in Cambodia.
At the age of 70 David realizes that he
will not leave jail alive and would prefer is death to come sooner rather than
later.
For anyone interested in how this matter
has unfolded (and with the patience necessary!) should start at #1 and read
through to #46.
Phillip
Hammond
Foreign
Secretary
Parliamentary House of Commons
London SW1A
25st November 2014
Dear Mr Hammond
This is my 20th
letter to you regarding the complicity of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office
in the destruction of Mr David Fletcher’s reputation and life. With Mr
Fletcher’s probable death in the near future, the FCO will have been complicit
in contributing in a major way to the loss of hope that results in his suicide.
Actions pour les Enfants
(APLE) is sponsored by the British government through its embassies. APLE
boasts that it has had 44 perpetrators arrested and 39 convicted. How many of
the convicted are, like David Fletcher, innocent?
Ambassador Mark Kent was complicit
in assisting APLE and Thai authorities in having Mr Fletcher arrested in
Bangkok on the basis of scuttlebutt he read on a social media site (Khmer440) and
held in a Thai prison despite the lack of any crime committed by him.
Ambassador Kent also gave instructions to his staff to destroy Mr Fletcher’s
passport when it became apparent that he was not in Cambodia at the time of the
alleged rapes – March 2009.
Mr Fletcher’s attempts to
obtain from the FCO a detailed account of what happened to his passport (and my
own attempts, on his behalf) have been deliberately thwarted by Sue Bennett this
past few months. I am sure Mr Bennett
has been acting on orders and not of her own volition. Who has instructed MS
Bennett to refuse Mr Fletcher documents he is entitled to under FOI
legislation? You are the captain of the ship, Mr Hammond, so you are
responsible – regardless of which person within your department has issued
these orders.
On 6th Oct 2014
Sue Bennett wrote to me the following words:
Outcome of Search
I am writing to confirm that the FCO does have
information relevant to your request. However, we are withholding this
information for the reasons set out below.
The reasons for withholding
information, nonsense in themselves, are not relevant here. The point is that
more than 7 weeks ago Mr Bennett was in possession of the documents requested
by Mr Fletcher and to which he was and is entitled under FOI legislation.
Yesterday, Mr Bennett wrote
to Mr Fletcher:
I apologise for the continued delay - we are currently
consulting with external stakeholders and other government departments about
the information we are assessing for release. We will send a further update at
the end of next week.
Why should copies of
documents relating to each and every stage of Mr Fletcher’s passage through the
British Thai Embassy take 8 weeks to process? If, for whatever reason, it is
necessary to redact names, we have made it perfectly clear on several occasions
now that the names can and should be redacted. It is the dates on which certain
things occurred that is significant at this point – most particularly the date
on which the Thai British Embassy came into possession of the passport.
Two different versions of
what happened to Mr Fletcher’s passport have been given to us: (1) That the
destruction of the passport was a ‘mistake’ and (2) that the destruction was
deliberate and in accordance with FCO protocols.
Given that you, Mr Hammond,
refuse to verify which version is the true one, we must try to figure this out
from the documents we have requested; the documents that Sue Bennett is going
to great lengths not to provide.
Mr Fletcher is on the fourth
day of a hunger strike that will end with his death. He has no intention of
dying slowly in jail but wishes the process to happen with as much haste as
possible. I believe that Mr Fetcher is serious in his wish to die. When I met
him a few months ago he was in the 21st day of a fast to the death. He only ended this
when it seemed, through my letter writing, that there was a glimmer of hope
that the FCO might be induced to provide him with photocopies of the pages of
his passport that would have proved that he was not in Cambodia at the time of
the alleged rapes. That glimmer of hope has faded with the Phnom Penh Municipal
Court’s refusal, on 20th Nov, to allow Mr Fletcher the retrial
promised him on 27th Oct.
Given that the Foreign &
Commonwealth Office has not only been complicit in having Mr Fletcher jailed in
the first place but has no interest at all in his fate, I have made a last
minute appeal to the Minister of Justice to intervene and allow Mr Fletcher a
fair trial. If he allows this to occur, Mr Fletcher will surely be found ‘not
guilty’ because there is no evidence that he raped Yang Dany - who remained a
virgin after the alleged rapes.
In any event, Action Pour
les Enfants, sponsored by the British Embassy, has seen to it that Yang Dany
cannot be in court to be cross-examined regarding the evidence she has previously
given. It is highly unlikely that Yaang Dany will ever be seen or heard of
again as it seems that she has been trafficked to China. In a properly
constituted court, Yang Dany’s absence from the proceedings, her unavailability
for cross-examination, would in itself be sufficient to have the case dismissed
and the original ‘guilty’ verdict overturned.
I no more expect a response
from you to this letter than I have expected a response to the last dozen or so
letter I have sent. You are, Mr Hammond, engaged in a deliberate cover up that
will, in all likelihood, result in Mr Fletcher’s death. If Mr Fletcher is
granted a re-trial, if he does live, I trust that in a properly constituted
court of law you, Ambassador Mark Kent and others will be obliged to explain,
under oath, why you allowed a British citizen to be tried and convicted for a
crime he could not possibly have convicted without so much as a request to the
Cambodian authorities that he be granted the fair trial that was (and is) his
right in accordance with the Cambodian Code of Criminal Procedure; why
Ambassador Mark Kent ordered the destruction of Mr Fletcher’s passport.
yours sincerely
James Ricketson
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