James Ricketson
316 Whale Beach Road
Palm Beach 2108
Sydney, Australia
Emily Barry
Customer Service
Manager
Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
Millbank Tower
Millbank
London
SW1P 4QP
Dear Ms Barry
re 22nd Dec deadline for complaint to Ombudsman
I am responding on Mr
Fletcher’s behalf to your email to him regarding the 22nd Dec
deadline to make a complaint about the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. Mr
Fletcher has asked me to do so because, as you are aware, he is not in a
position to advocate appropriately on his own behalf. Whilst I have put this in
writing several times before, let me do so again lest there be any
misunderstanding.
And let me attach, again,
the hand-written, thumb-printed and signed letter from Mr Fletcher dated 10th
Sept 2014 in which he makes clear his request that I be allowed to act on his
behalf.
The practical reality of Mr
Fletcher’s life in jail vis a vis documents and communication are as follows:
(1) Documents cannot be posted
to or from the jail in which Mr Fletcher is incarcerated.
(2) Documents cannot be
delivered to Mr Fletcher in jail, or removed from the jail, other than by the
British Embassy or a lawyer – which he cannot afford.
(3) The British Embassy
refuses to assist Mr Fletcher with either the delivery of documents to the jail
or taking them from the jail and delivering them on his behalf. One upshot of
this is that Mr Fletcher was unable to deliver certain legal documents to the
Phnom Penh Municipal Court within the required time-frame. The non-delivery of
these documents comprised the sole reason why the judges at the Phnom Penh
Municipal Court refused to allow Mr Fletcher the ‘re-trial’ on 20th
Nov that they had promised 3 weeks earlier.
Had the British Embassy in
Cambodia seen its job as assisting Mr Fletcher in his quest for a fair trial,
as opposed to thwarting his every effort to acquire one, the outcome in court
on 20th Nov could well have been quite different – especially in light
of the fact that it was, by then, abundantly clear from well-documented
evidence that Mr Fletcher could not have raped Yang Dany. (This evidence being
(a) the Sept 2010 doctors report that Yang Dany’s hymen was intact after two
‘brutal rapes’ and (b) Yang Dany’s admission that no rapes had occurred.)
(4) When I am in Phnom Penh
I can smuggle small numbers of documents into and out of the jail. This is, of
course, illegal, but neither Mr Fletcher nor myself have much choice if I am to
assist him in the conveyance of documents.
(5) When I am not in Phnom
Penh Mr Fletcher must rely on a prison guard to smuggle documents in and out of
jail. For this illegal service he must pay money. Mr. Fletcher had all his
money stolen last month and so cannot, in Dec 2014, get documents in or out of
jail.
I am not in Phnom Penh and
able to smuggle them and cannot afford to return to Cambodia to assist him at
this time. Given the refusal of the FCO to deliver documents to me in
Australia, as Mr Fletcher requested, I may be left with no choice but to travel
to Cambodia early in the new year with the express purpose of smuggling
documents out of jail so that I can post them to a lawyer in the United
Kingdom.
(6) As you know, Mr Fletcher
has sporadic use of a $20 mobile phone. His use of it is illegal and yet you are
relying on him to break Cambodian law in order to fill out forms online by 22nd
Dec. If he were to be caught using the phone he could get into trouble and, no
doubt, the very same Embassy that refuses to assist with the delivery of documents,
would offer Mr Fletcher no assistance at all.
That you are recommending Mr
Fletcher fill out online forms by breaking Cambodian law raises some
interesting ethical and legal questions. ‘Interesting’ is the operative word.
They are not really worth exploring because you know, the FCO knows, all who
work at the British Embassy in Phnom Penh know that there is no rule of law in
Cambodia. If you can afford to pay the right people you can have free use of a
mobile phone in prison. If you can afford to pay the right people you can have
anyone convicted of whatever offence you like. (I have had first hand
experience with this, having been found guilty (in absentia) of committing a
crime that does not exist on the Cambodian statutes – “threatening to dishonour”.)
(7) The internet signal in
the jail is sometimes non-existent and always weak. It can take several hours
for an email to travel from Phnom Penh to Sydney. The signal is so weak that it
is impossible for Mr Fletcher to fill out online forms of the kind that you
request him to fill out by 22nd Dec.
Even if Mr Fletcher was in a
position to fill out forms by 22nd Dec there would be little point
in his doing so for the following reasons:
(a) In order for Mr Fletcher
to make a proper complaint about the Foreign & Commonwealth Office it is
both appropriate and necessary that he be in possession of as much information
as he can be regarding his treatment
this past four and a half years at the hands of the FCO.
(b) Given that Foreign
Secretary Phillip Hammond, Ambassador Mark Kent, Julian Blewett, Ross Allen,
Nigel Eustace and others refuse to answer any questions put to them by him, or
by myself, it is necessary for Mr Fletcher to obtain all the information he
needs to make a complaint to your office through the acquisition of documents
in accordance with The Data Protection Act of 1998 (DPA). This process has been
complicated by:
1. The glacial speed at which the FCO
has responded to Mr Fletcher’s Data Protection requests. The first tranche of
documents were delivered to Mr Fletcher in prison only three days ago.
2. The documents are not arranged in
chronological sequence. They have been jumbled up in such a way as to make Mr
Fletcher’s job of placing them in sequence as difficult as possible. This will
take him some time. And, in the new year, there will be a further tranche of
documents delivered to him. These also, it seems, will be arranged in no
chronological sequence and it will require a good deal of time and energy on Mr
Fletcher’s part to get them in order.
3. Many of the most significant
documents that have been requested have not been included in the first tranche
delivered to Mr Fletcher. Sue Bennett has clearly been instructed to be as
obstructive as possible; to make Mr Fletcher ask again, and possibly yet again,
for documents he asked for months ago.
It may well be, in making a formal
complaint to the Ombudsman, that the documents the FCO refuses to release are
more important than the ones it does release. We will not know this for sure
until Mr Fletcher has exhausted his capacity to acquire documents through the
Data Protection Act 1998.
4. Once this point has been reached
(and it may be a few months off) the task will then be to get all of these
documents out of the jail and into the hands of a lawyer in the United Kingdom.
Mr Fletcher does not wish to make a formal complaint to your office that is
‘half-baked’ and lacking in the kind of clarity that your office requires. This
process could also take some time, though I do not know how long as (a) we do
not have all the documents as yet and (b) the acquisition of the appropriate
lawyer in the UK has not yet been finalized.
It is already clear, from the
documents that were released a few days ago in relation to Mr Fletcher’s
passport, that the Foreign & Commonwealth Office has, to put it as politely
as I can, played fast and loose with the truth. Ross Allen in particular. Or,
to be more diplomatic still, Mr Allen has been parsimonious with the truth. See:
http://cambodia440.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/71-freedom-in-information-data.html
Given that I am not in Cambodia at
present I am in the process of arranging for these particular passport-related documents
to be smuggled out of the jail and sent to me. If what Mr Fletcher has told me
is true (and I have every reason to believe that it is, as he has quoted from
the documents verbatim), on the question of the destruction of his passport
alone various senior FCO officials should be charged by the police with having
conspired to pervert the course of justice.
Whilst a formal complaint to your
office may be some months off I will continue to copy you on my letters to
Foreign Secretary Mr Phillip Hammond. I will be publishing these on my blog
also. My reason for doing so is probably clear by now. I have had considerable
experience with bureaucracies this past 40 years and with spin doctors this
past decade. I know how they operate. By placing all my correspondence with Mr
Hammond on record it will be very difficult for even a first class spin doctor
to present, at some point in the future, the proposition that Mr Hammond was
unaware of the many and varied ways in which the Foreign & Commonwealth
Office has, for four and a half years, abrogated Mr Fletcher’s legal and human
rights and gone out of its way to thwart him in his attempts to be provided
with a fair trial. The destruction of his passport is the most blatant example
of this.
best wishes
James Ricketson
I'm not sure how far the British Embassy is from the prison but I guess no more than 20 minutes? It is totally unacceptable that the consular service is making this so difficult for this poor man. They should be getting their driver into their four wheel drive vehicle and taking these documents to the prison by hand. I guess it's too busy taking staff to cocktail parties.
ReplyDeleteThey should be spending as much time as it takes to be with him at the prison and helping him sort this out, even if they have to be there for several hours each day.
Just think how you would feel if you got set up and thrown in jail for something you had not done and were treated like this. Cambodia in particular is rife with false allegations because of the support for organisations like APLE who target some innocent people and abuse children and their parents in the process. Many children have suffered because of APLE.
I’ve heard the British Embassy have funded APLE. Is that true?
It is not for any of us to decide if David Fletcher is innocent or guilty but what is important for everyone is the right to a fair trial and not trial by lynch mob or for politically motivated reasons.
I read a new British parliamentary report (November 2014) into the consular service which said (and bear in mind this is the British parliament saying this not me!):
"Many British citizens each year are arrested in countries where even the most basic internationally recognised fair trial rights are routinely violated. Despite the FCO’s commitment to ensuring that British defendants are treated in line with international fair trial standards, the FCO only rarely raises concerns about individual cases, and this is normally attributable to pressure from MPs, civil society and the media, even where such breaches are very serious".
In the case of David Fletcher it is reported they have gone one step further, funded the accuser and even destroyed evidence! What is going on?
FCO - you need to be transparent and sort this out pretty quick because you are sitting on a can of worms much bigger than just this one case!
Incredible!!!!
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DeleteYes, it is no more than 20minutes from the British Embassy to the jail. And less than 10 minutes to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court where, on 20th Nov, David Fletcher was told that he could not have a 're-trial' (promised to him 3 weeks earlier by the same judges, because he had not delivered certain documents to the court on time. The British Embassy could have, if it had chosen to, delivered these documents. The Embassy chose not to. The Embassy also chose not attend the 20th Non 're-trial'.If a representative of the Embassy had done she he/she would have witnessed the farce that took place in court as the judges refuses to accept any evidence fromMr Fletcher or to allow him to make a statement to the court.
ReplyDeleteThe really is that the Brisih Embassy, Mr Phillip Hammond (Foreign Secretary) have dug themselves into a hole p a hole that the cannot extricate themselves from without admitting to their own complicity in the jailing of an innocent man. I twill take some time but Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond's credibility will be destroyed by this and he will have no choice but to resign.
Mr Ricketson I hope you are under no illusions that the Ombudsman is independent! The role of the office of the Ombudsman is to act as the PR department for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. You can be sure that the Ombudsman's response to any complaint by David Fletcher has already been written by one of Hammond's spin doctors. Irt will have been written in such a way as to acknowledge your concerns but, on reflection, to have arrived at the conclusion that Mr Fletcher's complaint does not warrant further investigation. And there will be a final note to the effect that given the Ombudsman's design in this matter no further communication will be entered into. Dont waste your time with the Ombudsman. It is a trap and that is why Ms Barry is so keen to have Mr Fletcher's complaint in her hot little hands by 22nd Dec so she can dispense with it and get you and Fletcher out of Hammonds hair. Dont fall into the trap Ms Barry has set for you.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many stories such as the one below the likes of Phillip Hammond need to read before the penny drops that the judiciary in Cambodia is both incompetent and corrupt and that British aid to Cambodia should be tied to fair trials for British citizens:
ReplyDelete"A judge at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court convicted a Spanish national of intentional murder yesterday and sentenced him to 10 years in jail, despite the court prosecutor and police having argued during the trial that the “victim” had not, in fact, been murdered.
Ricardo Blundell Perez, 40, was arrested on August 11 last year after police found the decomposing body of his British friend, John Peter Connell, at his rental house in Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district.
Connell died on July 17 of a drug overdose and was not murdered, Police Lieutenant Loeuk Um, who examined the body, told the court during a hearing on November 28.
Perez claims he found Connell dead in his living room after leaving him at his home for a few hours following a drinking session. He admits to having hid the body for weeks in his apartment but said this was because he was scared of being either charged with murder or arrested for illegally living in Cambodia if he reported the body.
At the conclusion of the trial, deputy court prosecutor Um Sopheak had appealed to the judge to change the charge to “hiding a body”, because he did not believe murder had been committed.
The Post reported on November 29 that the murder charge had been dropped, but Sopheak explained yesterday that the judge had actually not heeded his advice.
Yesterday, judge Chuon Soreasy convicted Perez of intentional murder and sentenced him to 10 years in prison.
“For this case, the court has considered that the accused, Blundell Perez Ricardo, was really involved in the death of the victim,” he said.
Soreasy added that he believed Perez was lying to the court in his explanation for why he did not report the body to police.
“The court has considered that the victim and the suspect were staying at the rental house together and drinking together before the victim was killed. If he was not the killer, he should have cooperated with the house owner, or other neighbours, or local people and reported the victim’s death to police.”
While he was escorted out of court yesterday, Perez said that he would appeal the “unjust” verdict.
“I recognise that I have illegally stayed in Cambodia and have packaged his body when I saw that he had died in my rental house’s room. But I did not kill him,” he said.
Perez said he would appeal the verdict next week.
His lawyers could not be reached for comment.
Sopheak, the prosecutor, said that no real evidence presented during the trial proved that Perez had committed murder.
“I saw like this, and so I asked the judge to change the charge,” he said.
“That was my suggestion to the judge, but whether the judge listens and acts or not on my suggestion . . . that is [the judge’s] decision and duty [to decide].”
Sok Sam Oeun, a prominent human rights lawyer, said that it was not uncommon in the Cambodian court system for judges to ignore the opinion of prosecutors, even when they suggest acquittal.
“It’s the problem with our legal system, the judge still has power,” he said.
“The concept of the prosecutor as the one who can initiate or who can file criminal complaints, that is wrong.”
Sam Oeun added, however, that Perez would have strong legal grounds for his appeal given the prosecutor’s stance."
There are extremely strong grounds to insist the FCO ensure ALL trials of British nationals in Cambodia are attended by a trained observer whose job it is to ensure the international standards of a fair trial are adhered to and that Cambodian law is followed. The excuse of ‘we can’t interfere with another country’s justice system’ won’t hold water as this is a monitoring process. The results of being monitored is enough to bring about a major reduction in cases brought to court by corrupt individuals and organisations. Hopefully this could be adopted by all countries to protect their citizens whilst in Cambodia.
ReplyDeleteSome would argue that local NGO’s are best to carry this out but as we are seeing most of these NGO’s are at best reluctant to speak out about unclean NGO’s who bring false cases and at worst are complicit either directly or through personal friendships of their founders or directors.
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ReplyDeleteWho killed whom?
Delete