# 111 David Fletcher back in jail but, with renewed energy, determined to be given a fair trial

Foreign Secretary

Parliamentary House of Commons

London

SW1A                                                                                                            

23^rd April 2015

Dear Mr Hammond

My 39^th letter to you!

As with the previous 38 this one will yield no response from you. Nonetheless, it will be on record and the day will come when you will be held accountable for your silence, your inaction, the failure in your duty of care to a citizen of the United Kingdom.

I arrived back in Cambodia late yesterday to be greeted by an email from Stuart Poole, Customer Service Manager to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. 

Dear Mr Ricketson

Mr David Fletcher’s complaint about the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO)

Thank you for providing us with further information in relation to Mr Fletcher’s complaint.

We have decided to investigate Mr Fletcher’s complaint about the FCO. Please find attached a letter to Mr Fletcher for your information.

We have also been made aware of your website. On that website you have published copies of our correspondence to you and Mr Fletcher; this includes the names of our staff members.

Our investigations, and the decisions whether or not we should investigate, are conducted in private as Parliament requires. We ask you to respect that by not naming our staff and not placing correspondence we send to you and Mr Fletcher in the public domain. Please remove the references to our staff members from your website.

If you continue to place copies of our correspondence on your website during our consideration of the case then we may have to decide whether you are acting responsibly as Mr Fletcher’s representative. That may result in us not accepting you as a suitable person to represent Mr Fletcher. We would then have to ask him to find another representative.

We would much rather avoid having to do this as we recognise that Mr Fletcher is isolated and it may be difficult for him to make suitable alternative arrangements. I hope, therefore, to avoid further unnecessary complications and stress for Mr Fletcher during this period, you will exercise restraint and allow us to accept you as his representative.

Yours sincerely

Stuart Poole

Customer Service Manager

Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman

Millbank Tower

Millbank

London

My response to Mr Poole was as follows:

Dear Stuart Poole

You will be aware that one month ago, in desperation, having given up hope that anyone was going to help him (including the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman ) Mr Fletcher attempted to end his life. He did not succeed and, after being in a coma for 8 days, has been slowly recovering. He has been abandoned by the Cambodian Embassy and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office - up to and including Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond. The FCO even went do far as to destroy evidence in his case in the form of Mr Fletcher's passport. Your office has done nothing to assist Mr Fletcher despite his many requests and despite your office having been copied on around 35 letters sent to Mr Hammond. And now, at the 11th hour, you are offering to assist Mr Fletcher as long as I - a filmmaker and journalist - do not identify any of those who have played a role this past few years in treating Mr Fletcher with contempt.

Given the incompetence and indifference revealed by the FCO I intend, with Mr Fletcher's permission, to refer the matter of his 'accidentally destroyed' passport to the British police in an attempt to find out which of the stories told by various members of the FCO regarding Mr Fletcher's passport is true - if, indeed, any of them are.

In short I will now attempt to achieve what your office could have achieved months ago - namely to find out the true story of what happened to Mr Fletcher's passport . Who gave the order to destroy it? And who told FCO staff to lie about it and then, when I catch them out lying, tell me that they will have no further communication with me?

You know all this and have done nothing.

Mr Fletcher has been returned to the jail despite his ill health and need for further hospital treatment. And not one person from the British Embassy has shown the slightest interest in his fate, his well-being or offered to assist him in any way this past month.

Of one thing you can be fairly certain - Mr Fletcher will not fail the next time he decides that death at his own hand is preferable to a slow death in prison for a crime that the FCO has known for close to 5 years he did not commit.

best wishes

James Ricketson

Three days ago Mr Fletcher was returned from hospital to the jail. This morning I visited him there. He is much improved since I last saw him – both in mind and body. And his fighting spirit has returned.

Mr Fletcher told me that two days ago he had finally had delivered to him the documents that were supposed to be delivered in Jan this year. He has not had an opportunity to go through these papers as yet. We will go through them together during the next few days.

Mr Fletcher told me that a representative of the British Embassy (a Khmer woman) visited him two days ago in jail. She was very supportive and compassionate in her responses to his plight. She told Mr Fletcher that she had visited him in hospital each day that he was unconscious – as did I. I did not see her but Mr Fletcher believes that she did so and is very appreciative of her concern for his well-being. He is also very appreciative of the support he has received throughout this past month from the prison guards and fellow inmates. As I am sure the Khmer woman from the Embassy will confirm, Mr Fletcher is an old-fashioned English gentleman who treats everyone he encounters with courtesy and respect. He is, in person, far removed from the monster that Peter Hogan, Scott Neeson and members of the 4^th estate have presented him to be to the public at large.

I informed Mr Fletcher that his lawyer had managed to obtain a date for a hearing of his case – to determine whether or not he should be entitled to a fair trial midway through his 10 year jail sentence. This is being referred to as a ‘re-trial’ but, as you know, as you and the FCO have known for close to 5 years, there has been no trial at all at which Mr Fletcher was in attendance or in a position to present evidence in his defense or to have Yang Dany, his alleged victim, cross-examined. He has not even been interviewed by the police of an investigating judge this past five years.

The hearing will be held on 7^th May – two weeks away. As you know Thierry Darnaudet’s ‘child protection NGO’, Action Pour les Enfants, has sent Yang Dany to China so that she cannot testify or be cross-examined. This leaves the matter of Mr Fletcher’s passport, containing evidence that he was not in Cambodia at the time of the alleged rapes, as a key piece of evidence. The Foreign & Commonwealth Office has acknowledged that it destroyed Mr Fletcher’s passport  and it would be very useful for his defense to have a letter to that effect from the FCO. Could you please instruct your staff to provide such a letter?

To date all of Mr Fletcher’s experiences with the Cambodian legal system have been disastrous – to put it mildly. And whilst he has hopes that on 7^th May the judges may finally grant his wish to be tried in accordance with the Cambodian Code of Criminal Procedure, he is also aware that there are many people and organizations, including the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, that would have a lot of egg on their faces if he were to be found innocent after so much effort has been put into his pursuit and prosecution. Mr Fletcher is well aware of the way in which ‘justice’ is administered in Cambodian and is prepared for the worst.

Mr Fletcher told me this morning, in no uncertain terms, that he was only interested in walking out of jail an innocent man. He is not interested in receiving a pardon from the King – one path that has been suggested to him of late. He is likewise not interested in being repatriated to the UK on the pretext that, at age 70, he is too old to be in a Cambodian prison – another avenue he has been told is open to him. “I either leave this prison an innocent man or as a corpse,” were Mr Fletcher’s exact words. I understand that Mr Fletcher said much the same to the Khmer woman from the British Embassy who visited him two days ago.

It is up to you, Mr Hammond, to remove your head from the sand, take notice of this matter and instruct your staff to stop being obstructive and to abide by their duty of care to a citizen of the United Kingdom – namely to do all they can to see to it that Mr Fletcher receives a fair trial.

best wishes

James Ricketson