James Ricketson
316 Whale Beach Road
Palm Beach 2108
Sydney, Australia
Mr Phillip
Hammond
Foreign
Secretary
Parliamentary House of Commons
London SW1A
17th Dec. 2014
Dear Foreign Secretary
I received the following in an email
from Mr Fletcher yesterday:
Dear James,
I have finally received some of
the documents promised to me under the legal FOI act, better late than never I
presume. There are more than 400 documents in no order whatever, in fact many
blank and half blank pages, therefore almost impossible for an old man like me
to make sense of them. There is no logical legal reason given why they will not
accept you as my legal power of attorney…
Despite the obstacles placed
in his way by Ms Sue Bennett, Mr Fletcher has been able to glean some
interesting insights into the fate of his passport from the documents she has
provided him with:
28th July 2010
“(Name redacted) will take
n/a’s passport to the IDC tomorrow so he was withdraw his money from the
Western Union.”
Six days before
Mr Fletcher was due to fly to the United Kingdom (4th August) the
British Embassy in Thailand, by its own admission, was in possession of his
passport.
23rd May 2011
Note acquired through Data
Protection, name redacted, that reads:
“I told Mr Fletcher we are
now holding his passport.”
The British
Embassy in Bangkok is still in possession of Mr Fletcher’s passport 10 months
later.
29th Jan 2013
Note acquired through Data Protection,
name redacted (though we know that it is Julian Blewett), that reads:
“I visited David Fletcher on
24th Jan. I explained to David that we received his letter a few
days earlier but I did not write back because I knew we would come to see him that
day. I explained to him that….his passport was returned to the Passport Section
in July 2012 among the recovered passports and was already destroyed by
mistake.”
Destroyed by mistake! How,
within the confines of a presumably secure Embassy, is it possible to destroy a
passport by mistake? Fire? Flood? More importantly:
Where was Mr
Fletcher’s passport between 23rd May 2011 and July 2012?
Tanida Apivisuttirux, Pro
Consul wrote to Mr Fletcher on 21st Feb 2013 to confirm the mistaken
cancellation of Mr Fletcher’s passport:
...”your
passport was cancelled due to the Embassy’s mistake”
In Jan 2013 Mr Fletcher’s
passport had been ‘destroyed’. In Feb 2013 it had been cancelled!
7th Nov. 2014
In response to my question
“Why did the British Embassy cancel Mr Fletcher’s passport?” Ross Allen, Acting
Director Consular Services, wrote:
“When a British passport is
found and handed into an Embassy, the policy of Her Majesty’s Passport Office
(HMPO) is that the passport will not be returned to the holder because we do
not know who has had possession of the passport in the intervening period.
During this time the passport may have been tampered with, cloned or otherwise
compromised and therefore have become a security risk. Mr Fletcher’s passport
was received at the British Embassy with no accompanying explanation. I am
therefore satisfied that consular staff acted appropriately in cancelling it to
HMPO.”
How does Ross Allen account
for the whereabouts of Mr Fletcher’s passport between 23rd May 2011
(when it was held by the British Embassy in Thailand) and July 2012, when it
was ‘returned’ to the British Embassy in Thailand?
The only way that Ross
Allen’s statement quoted here makes sense is if, somehow, the British Embassy
in Thailand lost or misplaced Mr Fletcher’s passport outside the confines of
the Embassy after 23rd May 2011! How could this be possible?
Then, somehow, 14 months
later, someone outside the confines of the Embassy found Mr Fletcher’s passport
and handed it in to the Embassy – “with no accompanying explanation.” And
no-one at the Embassy put 2 and 2 together and figured out that the passport
that had mysterious appeared belonged to a British citizen who was currently in
a Thai prison.
Under what circumstances was
the passport returned after its 14 month sojourn outside the Embassy?
The problems with Ross
Allen’s account do not end here. Tanida Apivisuttirux refers to mistaken
cancellation, Julian Blewett refers to mistaken destruction whilst Ross Allen
refers to the cancellation’ destruction as having taken place in accordance
with established protocols.
Ross Allen’s account of what
happened to Mr Fletcher’s passport cannot be reconciled with Tanida
Apivisuttirux and Julian Blewett’s accounts. And none of these three accounts
can be reconciled with the documented evidence Mr Fletcher now has in his
possession.
The documented evidence
suggests overwhelmingly that the British Embassy had Mr Fletcher’s passport in
its uninterrupted possession from 3rd August 2010, at least, until
July 2012 – when it was first cancelled and then destroyed.
Who ordered the cancellation
and destruction of Mr Fletcher’s passport? The answer to this question is not
to be found in any of the documents Mr Fletvher has been provided.
Given that Ambassador Mark
Kent, Julian Blewett and Ross Allen all knew that Mr Fletcher required his
passport as evidence in his defense in his court case in Cambodia (if such had
ever been granted him) it is difficult to escape the conclusion that at the
very highest level within the British Embassy in Thailand and within the
Foreign & Commonwealth Service there has been a conspiracy to pervert the
course of justice with the wanton destruction of Mr Fletcher’s passport.
Clearly, the Foreign &
Commonwealth Office cannot investigate itself. The question of what happened to
Mr Fletcher’s passport should be placed in the hands of Scotland Yard such that
an independent investigation can be made into
how and why evidence required by Mr Fletcher was destroyed, who ordered
its destruction and why.
best wishes
James Ricketson
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