# 73 Three different versions of how Mr Fletcher's passport was 'destroyed by mistake' are not backed up by Data Protection evidence.

James Ricketson

316 Whale Beach Road

Palm Beach 2108

Sydney, Australia

jamesricketson@gmail.com

Mr Phillip Hammond

Foreign Secretary

Parliamentary House of Commons

London SW1A                                                                                   

19th  Dec. 2014

Dear Foreign Secretary

Following on from my letter of 17^th Dec – my 33^rd letter to you. This is letter number 34! My paper trail.

Mr Fletcher is going through one of those periods when he is unable to communicate with the outside world. However, he did manage to have a few ‘Data Protection’ documents smuggled out of the jail and crude photos of them sent to me. One makes for interesting reading vis a vis your refusal to even acknowledge receipt of my letters, let alone answer any of the questions contained in them.

 “The POA does not compel us to deal with a third party in such circumstances when there is a clear ability to deal directly with the requestor.”

The ‘third party’ is clearly myself. There is no name attached to this document but it bears the DNA of Ross Allen. Two points:

(1) The POA (whatever that may be!) may not ‘compel’ the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to deal with me but why on earth does the FCO – at all levels, up to and including your own office – put so much effort into thwarting my efforts to advocate on Mr Fletcher’s behalf to be given a fair trial?

(2) The FCO does not have a ‘clear ability to deal directly with the requestor’. Mr Fletcher’s use of a $20 mobile phone within the jail is both sporadic and illegal. As I explained to Emily Barry in my letter yesterday, Mr Fletcher is very limited in what he can do with his mobile phone owing to poor reception and to periods, such as now, when he cannot use it at all. See:

http://cambodia440.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/72-to-ms-emily-barry-re-22nd-dec.html

That Ross Allen expects Mr Fletcher to break Cambodian law with his use of a mobile phone in jail opens up some interesting ethical questions! More from Mr Allen:

“The FCO owes a duty of care to its employees; it has a responsibility to protect its employees from harm which may occur and we will not tolerate abusive behavior and vexatious communications.”

Does the FCO owe a duty of care to a British citizen accused of a crime that he could not have committed – unless, that is, Mr Allen believes that a woman’s hymen can grow back?

The implication that I may harm an employee of the FCO is nonsense. I met the man one time in jail, surrounded by prison guards. I swore at him because he insisted on his ‘right’ to sit in on a conversation taking place between Mr Fletcher and myself after he had been asked to leave and allow us to talk in private. My use of the word ‘fuck’, heard regularly on prime time TV, does not constitute ‘abusive behaviour’. And if this gentleman’s delicate sensibilities are offended by the word ‘fuck’, used within the confines of a jail, I suggest that he may not be in the right job!

It is the reference to ‘vexatious communications’ that is of most relevance here. What Ross Allen considers to be ‘vexatious communications’ are letters that ask questions he does not want to answer and which point out to him, using FCO documents as evidence, that he plays fast and loose with the truth. See my letter to Emily Barry. Let me be less polite, more ‘vexatious’: Ross Allen is a liar!

I now have copies of some of the documents Mr Fletcher quoted from and which I have included in my letter to Emily Barry. I have attached one document that makes it clear that the British Embassy in Thailand was in possession of Mr Fletcher’s passport on 23^rd May 2011. (The markings on this document are, it seems, Mr Fletcher’s.)

In Ross Allen’s account of how the British Embassy in Thailand acquired Mr Fletcher’s passport it is not possible for it to have been within the Embassy on 23^rd May 2011 – unless, that is, the passport was removed from the embassy after 23d May, was lost and then found by some unknown person in July 2012 and returned to the Embassy under mysterious circumstances. This does not pass the laugh test but there is no need for Ross Allen to account for what happened to Mr Fletcher’s passport between 23^rd may 2011 and July 2012 because he has announced that he will not correspond with me in any way. A neat, if very crude, bureaucratic trick! Do you buy it, Mr Hammond?

“As you know we advised Mr Ricketson on 7^th Nov 2014 that we will not reply to any of this emails or speak with him personally either on the telephone or in person.”

So, regardless of Mr Fletcher’s express wishes (in writing) that I be able to advocate on his behalf,  regardless of Mr Fletcher’s desire to provide me with power of attorney, regardless of the fact that I am the only person in the world trying to secure for Mr Fletcher a fair trial, no-one within the FCO will communicate with me. What an extraordinary state of affairs! And Ross Allen has the gall to use the expression ‘duty of care’ whilst he reveals, though his actions, a total absence of dute of care for Mr Fletcher.

And of course, neither Ross Allen nor anyone else within the FCO will account for where Mr Fletcher’s passport was for the 14 months between May 2011 and July 2012!

In the universe in which I live, the FCO would be absolutely delighted that there was someone such as myself prepared to advocate on Mr Fletcher’s behalf, to dig out documents (like the doctor’s report that declared Yang Dany’s intact hymen), ask questions,  conduct an investigation, write to the Cambodian Minister of Justice and so on. The FCO would be delighted because at every level within the FCO it is known that the Cambodian judiciary is corrupt. Anyone trying to help a victim of such corruption would be welcomed with open arms by the FCO. In my world, that is – a world in which we all owe each other a duty of care. Mr Fletcher clearly needs assistance in fighting for his right to a fair trial and I am able to provide some assistance.  And I would hope, if our positions were reversed, that he would assist me also.

In the parallel universe in which Ambassador Mark Kent, Julian Blewett, Nigel Eustace, Ross Allen, Sue Bennett and others live every effort is made to deny a citizen of the United Kingdom the right to a fair trial, up to and including the destruction of cogent evidence of his innocence – his passport. I can think of no diplomatic way of describing such behaviour and so will be vexatious again. It is corrupt. The FCO has revealed itself to be bereft of the most elementary of moral values. Ross Allen again:

“If you need any advice or assistance with either your subject access request or your ongoing complaint please contact us directly.”

This reads well on file but, as you know, Mr Hammond, it is not possible for Mr Fletcher, for long periods of time, to make contact with the British Embassy. Or with me. Or with anyone else. More importantly, as the events of the past few months demonstrate, when Mr Fletcher does ‘need assistance’ it is not provided to him by the Embassy. His court appearance on 20^th Nov is a case in point.

It seemed, from the hearing of 3 weeks earlier (which no representative of the British Embassy attended), that this was to be a genuine trial. Both Mr Fletcher and myself asked if a representative of the British Embassy would be present in court on 20^th Nov. There was no response and no representative of the Embassy was present that day. If there had been s/he would have observed what can best be described as a legal farce – about which I have written and need not write about again. Suffice it to say that had there been a representative of the British Embassy present s/he would have had no alternative but to write a report that would go on file to the effect that no attempt was made by the judges at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court to adhere to any of the basic legal precepts outlined in the Cambodian Code of Criminal Procedure.

In the world in which I live, a world in which ‘duty of care’ is not just a phrase to be bandied about but is shorthand for a way in which people actually care for each other, at least one representative of the British Embassy would have been in court on 27^th Oct and 20^th Nov. The judges would have looked out into the court and noted the presence of the British Embassy and may have felt a little more inclined to adhere to the Cambodian Code of Criminal Procedure than they were with no British Embassy representatives present. The same applies for human rights NGOs such as LICADHO. With no Embassy reps present (or human rights reps) the judges knew that they could act as they pleased and that no-one was likely to even write a report about the obvious miscarriage of justice that had occurred. So, the FCO will have nothing on file regarding either of these two court appearances and so cannot have any informed opinion about what took place.

Why did the British Embassy’s ‘duty of care’ not extend to having at least one representative in court on 27^th Oct and 20^th Nov? This is not a rhetorical question!

As the events of the past few months make clear to me and as the events of the past four and a half years make clear to Mr Fletcher,  the Foreign & Commonwealth Office has don’t nothing at all to help him achieve a fair trial. It has evidenced no ‘duty of care’. Indeed, there is a mass of evidence (backed up now by Data Protection documents) that various senior members of the FCO have conspired to prevent evidence of Mr Fletcher’s innocence being presented to any court in Cambodia.

Why has the FCO put so much effort into thwarting Mr Fletcher’s efforts to secure a fair trial? Why is the FCO putting so much effort into preventing me from advocating on Mr Fletcher’s behalf?

These are questions best addressed in my 35^th letter to you, Mr Hammond. In the meantime, could you please explain to me, to Mr Fletcher, to others following this slowly unfolding drama on my blog, to readers of my eventual book and viewers of my film, just how you account for the whereabouts of Mr Fletcher’s passport between 23^rd May 2011 and July 2012. If, as all the evidence suggests, Ross Allen had lied about Mr Fletcher’s passport, will he be fired from his job? Or will yet another spin doctor be given the task of trying to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse!

Given the lack of any straight-forward answers to such questions from yourself or anyone else at the FCO I have no choice but to resort to conjecture to explain how and why it is that the FCO wishes to deny Mr Fletcher his right to a fair trial. Fortunately, Mr Fletcher now has some documents that put some meat on the bones of these conjectures – though who knows how long it will be before he in again ‘online’.

No doubt there will be, in the next tranche of documents released to Mr Fletcher in Jan, more information that can be used to add credibility to my conjecturing – despite Ms Bennett’s having clearly been instructed to hold back key documents.

A final word from Ross Allen:

“We want to help but will not communicate with Mr Ricketson. The Information Commissioner’s Office and the Parliamentary Services Ombudsman support our approach. My consular staff in Phnom Penh will talk to you about this when they visit to hand over the Thailand papers.”

So, my letter to Emily Barry yesterday was a waste of my time. She will not reply. The Information Commissioner’s Office and the Parliamentary Services Ombudsman have joined forces with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to obstruct Mr Fletcher’s quest, with my assistance, to be provided with a fair trial.

What an extraordinary state of affairs! And all taking place with your blessing, Mr Hammond!

best wishes

James Ricketson