Phillip
Hammond
Foreign
Secretary
Parliamentary House of Commons
London
SW1A
19th Feb 2015
Dear Mr Hammond
re David Fletcher’s passport
This is my 35th letter to you
regarding the mysterious destruction of Mr David Fletcher’s passport by the
Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
To date you have not acknowledged
receipt of one of my letters but, instead, have left it to a growing list of
spin doctors to find new ways not to answer questions or, in the case of Ross
Allen, to refuse to communicate with me at all. This refusal to communicate
with me extended, until a 8 days ago, to the Parliamentary
and Health Service Ombudsman.
In the event it is proven that Mr
Fletcher’s passport, containing evidence of his innocence of the charge of
rape, was deliberately destroyed by senior consular officials at the UK Thai
Embassy, you are now complicit in the cover-up that has taken place to conceal
the truth.
Here is the content of the email
sent to me by Dilvinder Sander Caseworker for the Parliamentary and
Health Service Ombudsman on 11th Feb.
Dear Mr
Ricketson
Thank
you for your email and letter. We have now placed Mr Fletcher’s consent on file
and attached you as a representative for his complaint.
From
the correspondence you and Mr Fletcher have sent to us we can see that he is
generally unhappy with the actions of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (the
FCO). However, for us to be able to investigate a complaint it is important
that we fully understand the issues complained about and the impact of these
issues on the complainant. We also need to be clear what the complainant
would like to achieve through bringing his complaint to us.
At
present, although I understand that Mr Fletcher is unhappy with the level of
support provided to him by the FCO, it is unclear what his specific complaint
is. We do appreciate that it is difficult for Mr Fletcher to correspond
with us directly. However, we are unable to take the complaint forward
without this information.
We note
in your letter to us that a formal complaint may be some months off. I
should explain that we would not ordinarily keep a case open for this length of
time if we are unable to progress it. Therefore, it may be more sensible at
this stage for us to close the case to allow you and Mr Fletcher the time to
compile the information you need to make the complaint. In that event,
you would be free to return to us at a later date and we would be able to
consider Mr Fletcher’s case again. I should also add that we will retain
on file the information you have already provided, so you would not need to
send this again.
Alternatively,
if you wish to proceed with the complaint at this stage, we will need some
further information from you. In particular, I would be grateful if you
could clarify the following:
- What is Mr Fletcher’s complaint about the
FCO? It would be helpful if you could be as specific as possible;
- How Mr Fletcher has been personally affected by
the events he is complaining about; and
- What outcomes he would like us to achieve on his
behalf.
Please
provide this information to us by 11
March 2015. If you are unable to provide us with the information by this
date we will close the complaint.
If you
have any questions do not hesitate to contact me.
Yours
sincerely
Dilvinder Sander
Poor Dilvinder! S/he has been
given the job of creating the illusion that the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman operates
independently of the FCO. At arms length. Clearly this is not the case. My
response to Dilvinder speaks for itself.
Dilvinder Sander
Caseworker
Parliamentary and
Health Service Ombudsman
Millbank Tower
Millbank
London
SW1P 4QP
Dear Dilvinda Sander
Whilst I
appreciate that you are, some four months down the track, prepared to accept
that I can act on Mr Fletcher's behalf, I wonder if this actually means that
you acknowledge the power of attorney that he has vested in me?
If so, could you
please ask the FCO to deliver to me, in Phnom Penh, the 2nd tranche of
documents promised to Mr Fletcher. These were to be delivered to him in Jan
this year. They have not been.
I have attached
a letter written a little over a week ago in which Mr Fletcher asks for them,
yet again. I would like to pick these documents up from the British Embassy in
Phnom Penh in the next two days.
I will refrain
from responding to the content of your email until I see if, in fact (and not
just in theory) I am able to act on Mr Fletcher's behalf and pick up the second
tranche of documents.
I will say at
this point, however, that I have no confidence at all in the FCO's desire to
assist Mr Fletcher in any way. Indeed all the evidence suggests that the FCO,
from Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond down, is prepared to do all it can to
thwart Mr Fletcher's desire (and his right) to a fair trial.
I have, as I
mentioned a week or so ago, appealed directly to the Minister for Justice in
Cambodia. See attached letter.
I have pasted below
an English language translation of this letter.
I will, in the
next 48 hours, as a result of new developments, be writing again to the
Minister for Justice.
best wishes
James Ricketson
Dilvinder Sander did not,
needless to say, respond to this email. Nor was the 2nd tranche of
promised documents forthcoming. So, on 16th Feb I wrote again:
Dear Dilvinda
Whilst the Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman now
accepts me as Mr Fletcher’s representative, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
does not. The FCO refuses to communicate with me in anyway despite Mr Fletcher
having granted me his power of attorney.
You already know this as I have copied in excess of 30 letters to
Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond to your office. It is more than a little
disingenuous of yourself, on behalf of the Parliamentary and Health Services
Ombudsman, to pretend that it does not know the nature of Mr Fletcher’s
complaint. Indeed, as of Dec 2014 the
office of the Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman refused to
communicate with me either. (see below).
The following is not by any means an exhaustive list of Mr
Fletcher’s complaints about the Foreign and Commonwealth Office but it will
suffice for the time being:
(1) The FCO has provided 3 different and contradictory versions
of how it came to be that Mr Fletcher’s passport was destroyed. When asked to
reconcile these three different versions the FCO refused to communicate with
either myself or Mr Fletcher any further.
(2) On 10th Dec 2014 Joanna Roper, Director Consular
Services, informed Mr Fletcher that he would be given a letter which “will
explain the decision we have taken not to comply with your power of
attorney request following legal advice.”
The letter in question, written by Acting
Director of Consular Services Ross Allen, explains
nothing at all. The relevant part of it reads:
“In your email of 1 December you
asked for confirmation that we would accept your Power of Attorney (POA)
instruction and communicate directly through your friend, James Ricketson, on
all matters relating to your subject access request and complaint. We have
sought legal advice about this and I regret that we are not duty bound to
comply with this request for the following reasons:
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.
…As you know we advised Mr
Ricketson on 7th Nov that we will not
reply to any of his emails or speak with him personally either on the telephone
or in person.”
In light of what I have learnt from documents that
have been provided to Mr Fletcher it is unsurprising that Ross Allen issued
such a fatwa - decreeing that no communication with me would take place. In
this way he can offer a lame ‘Yes Prime Minister’ bureaucrat’s justification
for not responding to me when I point out that he has been (I am trying to be
polite here) ‘parsimonious with the truth’ as regards the fate of Mr Fletcher’s
passport.
Here is Mr Allen’s account of when and how Mr
Fletcher’s passport came into the possession of the British Embassy in Thailand
in July 2012:
“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 the passport and returning it to HMPO.”
How can this assertion of Ross Allen’s be
reconciled with FCO documents that make it quite clear that Mr Fletcher’s
passport was in the British Embassy’s possession on 28th July 2010
and 23rd may 2011. Two extracts:
28th July 2010
“Will take a/n’s passport to the
IDC tomorrow so that he can draw his
money from the Western Union. Once we get hold on that amount the deportation
will be in place. I am trying to find out about the flight cost and its
availability and it is likely to be early next week.”
23rd May 2011
“I told Mr Fletcher that we were
now holding his passport…”
The only way that Ross Allen’s account could be
true is if, some time after 23rd May 2011, Mr Fletcher’s passport
left the British Embassy in Thailand, was somehow lost, then “found and handed
into” the embassy “with no accompanying explanation” a little over a year
later! For this scenario to be credible, the following questions must be asked:
- Why, at some point after 23rd
May 2011, did Mr Fletcher’s passport leave the embassy?
- Where was the passport sent? To
whom?
When Mr Fletcher’s passport was “found and handed
into” the British Embassy it was known to embassy staff that Mr Fletcher was in
a Thai prison, that he was fighting an extradition order from Cambodia and that
his passport contained evidence that he was not in Cambodia at the time of the
alleged rapes – March 2009. This leads to the question:
- Who issued the order that Mr Fletcher’s
passport be cancelled and then destroyed?
I doubt very much that the cancellation and
destruction of a passport happens without someone quite senior within the
embassy signing off on the process. Who was this person?
I suspect that the destruction of a passport would
not happen without the knowledge of the Ambassador to Thailand. Is this so? If
so, Ambassador Mark Kent knowingly destroyed evidence that Mr Fletcher required
for his defense in court in Cambodia.
Justice demands that precisely what happened to Mr
Fletcher’s passport be investigated by a body independent of the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office. I am not familiar enough with the British legal system to
know what body should conduct such an investigation but I would have thought, at
the very least, that the matter should be referred to the police – the
destruction of evidence required by Mr Fletcher in his legal defense.
That the Foreign & Commonwealth Office should
refuse to allow me to assist Mr Fletcher in his quest for a fair trial is, at
the very least, petty and vindictive. Why should the FCO put so much effort
into obstructing the course of justice?
The same applies with the Information Commissioner’s Office and the Parliamentary Health
and Services Ombudsman – both of which should, in theory, function
independently from the FCO and be committed to seeing to it that Mr Flether’s
legal and human rights are protected. Not so. In relation to the FCO’s refusal
to communicate with me, the covering letter also states:
“The Information Commissioner’s Office and the Parliamentary
Health and Services Ombudsman support our approach.”
So, as of
Dec. 2014 the Parliamentary Health and Services Ombudsman refused to
communicate with the person Mr Fletcher has asked them to communicate with! Myself
(Both ‘Monty Python’ and ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ spring to mind.)
The
Parliamentary Health and Services Ombudsman which, in theory, provides
oversight for the FCO was, in Dec 2014, working hand in glove with the FCO to
thwart Mr Fletcher’s attempts, with my assistance, to be provided with the fair
trial he has been denied for close to five years now!
In Feb
2015 the Parliamentary Health and Services Ombudsman, via yourself, Davinda,
has decided that it will communicate with me after all! What has caused the
Parliamentary Health and Services Ombudsman to change its mind? Or, more
pertinently, what does the Parliamentary Health and Services Ombudsman make of
the fact that Ross Allen’s fatwa is still in place; that the FCO refuses to
communicate with me or allow me to exercise the rights that accrued to me when
Mr Fletcher granted me his power of attorney? And why are you pretending,
Davinda, that you do not know the nature of Mr Fletcher’s complaints when you
have a thick folder in front of you which contains, in forensic detail, the
nature of Mr Fletcher’s complaints?
My
experience with bureaucracies (which is considerable) is that the tactic now
being employed by the FCO (working hand-in-glove with the Parliamentary Health
and Services Ombudsman) is to accept a complaint from myself so that you can
write a letter to Mr Fletcher filled with spin doctor bureaucratese of the ‘Yes
Prime Minister’ variety which says, in essence, “Having carefully considered
your complaint we find that the Foreign & and Commonwealth Office has not
been in breach of any of its obligations…” etc.
Please,
Davinda, your office has already made it clear that you work in conjunction
with the very body (the FCO) that you are supposed to investigate impartially.
I was not born yesterday!
If the
Parliamentary Health and Services Ombudsman wishes to actually do something to
assist Mr Fletcher, please do so but please do not write back to either Mr
Fletcher or myself with a response that is nothing other than spin designed to
obscure the fact that Ross Allen has lied about the fate of Mr Fletcher’s
passport.
If Ross
Allen cannot provide a plausible explanation for the whereabouts of Mr
Fletcher’s passport between 23rd May 2011 and July 2012 he has, at
the very least, been complicit in perverting the course of justice in Cambodia and
is not fit to occupy the position he does.
Given
that you do work hand-in-glove with the FCO could you please ask Ross Allen and
Joanna Roper why they refuse to (a) Accept my power of attorney and (b) why the
FCO refuses to provide Mr Fletcher with the second tranche of documents that he
was told would be delivered to him in January?
Addressing
two of your questions specifically You ask:
How Mr
Fletcher has been personally affected by the events he is complaining about?
Mr
Fletcher is serving a 10 year jail sentence for a crime he could not have
committed if he was not in Cambodia at the time of the alleged offences.
Evidence that he was not in Cambodia was contained in Mr Fletcher’s passport –
cancelled and destroyed by the FCO under circumstances that leave many
questions unanswered. Mr Fletcher wants answers and is entitled to them. I/we
find it hard to believe, under the circumstances, that Mr Fletcher’s passport
would have been destroyed without copies of the relevant pages of his passport
having been photocopied.
You ask
also:
What outcomes
he would like us to achieve on his behalf?
Mr
Fletcher wishes (a) to know why the FCO refuses to accept my as his
representative in accordance with the power of attorney he has vested in me,
(b) that the FCO make good its promise to provide Mr Fletcher with the
documents he was told would be delivered to him in Jan 2015 and (c) be provided
with answers to all the outstanding questions relating to the fate of his
passport at the hands of the FCO. The FCO should decide upon one story (rather
than three) and stick to it and, of course, provide all the documents required
to support this version of events.
Please,
when you respond to this letter, Dilvinda, no spin! Simply answer my questions
in a straight-forward manner and respond to my observations accordingly.
The
FCO has made it abundantly clear that it has no intention of assisting Mr
Fletcher in any way so I am now focusing my attention on the Minister for
Justice in Cambodia (see attached letter) in the hopes that he may not only
agree to allow Mr Fletcher a fair trial but also look into the activities
of those NGOs that feed off the poverty of the Cambodian people to fill their
coffers with sponsor and donor dollars.
best
wishes
Clearly,
Mr Hammond, you have no intention of instructing any members of your staff to
answer pertinent questions relating to the fate of Mr Fletcher’s passport. You have
clearly instructed them to be as obstructive as possible and thwart Mr
Fletcher’s quest for a fair trial. This includes the FCO’s refusal to supply Mr
Fletcher with the 2nd tranche of documents that he was told would be
delivered to him In Jan.
This
is your prerogative as Foreign Secretary, though to treat a UK citizen with
such contempt is morally reprehensible.
You
will appreciate that it is my responsibility, as a journalist and documentary
filmmaker, to persist with my enquiries until I obtain answers that are
credible. To date all Mr Fletcher or myself have been provided with is spin,
obfuscation and, in the case of Ross Allen, “We’re not going to communicate
with you because you used the f word to a sensitive member of our staff to whom
we owe a duty of care!”
And
the FCO’s duty of care the Mr Fletcher? Zero! “Let him rot in jail. No trial?
Who cares!”
Please,
Mr Hammond, were it not for the grave consequences for Mr Fletcher of the destruction
of his passport – close to 5 years in jail with no trial - this matter has all
the hallmarks of classic ‘Yes Prime Minister’ farce.
best
wishes
James
Ricketson
The British Government demonstrates it's total indifference when it comes to the welfare of it's own citizens. In Asia we know Karma will eventually pay you back but since these Technokrats have no conscious it does'nt matter to them while enjoying their position in a well paid government job.
ReplyDeleteOne thing is certain however and that is that their reputation already stinks !