# 180 The FCO, having been caught out lying, refuses to communicate with Mr Fletcher any more!

Phillip Hammond

Foreign Secretary

Parliamentary House of Commons

London

SW1A                                                                                                

3rd Jan 2016

Dear Mr Hammond

re The mysterious disappearance and reappearance of Mr David Fletcher’s passport whilst in the possession of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.

On 9^th Dec 2015, on my blog, I quoted from a letter sent to Mr Fletcher by Sir Simon Mc Donald, Permanent Under-Secretary of State, Foreign & Commonwealth Office regarding Mr Fletcher’s passport.

“I am sorry that I am unable to explain what happened to your passport between June 2010 and July 2012, but I welcome the PHSO’s conclusion that, in forwarding your passport to HMPO for cancellation, the FCO acted reasonably and in line with our guidance.”

As I wrote in my blog at the time:

“It is not very reassuring to know, in this ‘Age of Terror’ that Britain’s FCO can simply lose track of a passport in its possession for a period of two years and have no idea how it left the Thai Embassy, where it went and how it was that it came to mysteriously reappear in the Thai Embassy!”  Who was using it and for what purpose? Or had it simply fallen down the back of a couch!?”

Sir Simon was playing fast and loose with the truth; as had several other spin doctors within the FCO this past year – all offering a succession of equally implausible explanations at to what had happened to Mr Fletcher’s passport.

The FCO’s response to having it pointed out that Sir Simon was being parsimonious with the truth is to be found in a letter sent to Mr Fletcher by Ellie Lusty, Joint Head of Consular Assistance Department:

Dear Mr Fletcher

You have been sending repetitive emails from this email address over a number of weeks to consular staff at the British Embassy in Phnom Penh and other public correspondence addresses at the FCO. These concern your complaint about the cancellation of your passport and the apology from Sir Simon MacDonald, Permanent Under-Secretary at the FCO. Your complaint has been fully investigated by the Parliamentary and Heath Services Ombudsman (PHSO), who found that it was reasonable for the FCO to have cancelled your passport and return it to HMPO to be destroyed. You also write repeatedly about NGO corruption and the legalities of your case; and have published this correspondence on in an online blog.

Your frequent and repeated emails on this issue are disruptive and prevent consular officials from carrying out their duties. We can help you no further in this regard, so embassy staff in Cambodia and Thailand, and staff at the FCO in London will not respond to further email correspondence from you or your representative.

So, the FCO, having been caught out telling yet another set of lies about the whereabouts and fate of Mr Fletcher’s passport, decides that the best course of action is to cease to have any communication with Mr Fletcher at all.

Can the public in the UK have any confidence that pronouncements issuing from Sir Simon’s mouth and pen, and from other senior bureaucrats within the FCO are factually accurate?

It has been often suggested, by FCO spin doctors trying to give Mr Fletcher the brush-off, that the FCO does not and cannot interfere with judicial processes within Cambodia. There are two points that need to be made in relation to this assertion:

(1)  Neither Mr Fletcher nor myself (as his legally appointed ‘representative’) has ever asked the FCO to do anything other than request that Mr Fletcher be provided with a fair trial.

(2)  In 2010 the FCO most definitely ‘interfered’ with judicial processes within Cambodia (and Thailand) by co-operating in the pursuit and jailing of Mr Fletcher (in Thailand) on the basis of scuttlebutt spread by Scott Neeson and others, knowing full well (through CEOP) that no credible evidence had been uncovered implicating Mr Fletcher in the rape of Yang Dany.

And, since Sept 2010 the FCO (through CEOP) has known that Yang Dany remained a virgin after two ‘brutal’ hour long rapes! And, for the past year you have known, from Yang Dany’s own mouth (before she was spirited away to China; possibly trafficked) that both she and her mother insist that she was not raped.

It was because Mr Fletcher’s passport contained evidence that he was not in Cambodia at the time the alleged rapes occurred, because the FCO had been complicit in his arrest and illegal jailing in Thailand, that his passport had to ‘disappear’. And, when evidence of this began to emerge the FCO has had to think up different explanations to account for this ‘disappearance’.

Mr Hammond, both yourself and Sir Simon have demonstrated your total lack of concern for the welfare of a British citizen who has been denied a fair trial. Rather than deal with the incompetence manifested within the FCO and sack those responsible, you will allow one of your own citizens to die in jail without even requesting of your counterpart in Cambodia that Mr Fletvher be allowed, at the very least, a fair trial.

You are a disgrace, Mr Hammond. And so is Sir Simon and others further down the bureaucratic who have played their role in the denial of natural justice to Mr Fletcher.

My response to Sir Simon’s letter can be found at:

http://cambodia440.blogspot.com.au/2015/12/173-what-happened-to-mr-fletchers.html

best wishes

James Ricketson