# 146 UK Ombudsman's explanation of what happened to Mr Fletcher's passport

Phillip Hammond

Foreign Secretary

Parliamentary House of Commons

London, SW1A                      

21^st September 2015

Dear Mr Hammond

David Fletcher’s passport

I am writing to you, yet again, about the mysterious disappearance and destruction of Mr Fletcher’s passport by the FCO in 2012, despite FCO staff knowing that it contained evidence pertinent to legal proceedings that had been commenced in Cambodia. This illegal destruction of evidence has been written about a good deal and I need not go over the details again here.

Yes, it would have been handy to have David Fletcher’s passport to prove, in court, that he was not in Cambodia in March 2009, at the time he was allegedly twice raping Yang Dany. However, in light of a mass of other evidence that has come to light, the passport is a piece of evidence we can now do without in the event of a re-trial or a hearing in the Supreme Court of Cambodia.

Nonetheless, the following extracts from the UK Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s report re the mysterious disappearance and re-appearance of Mr Fletcher’s passport reveal a good deal about the sheer incompetence of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. And, I should add, of the Ombudsman’s office!

I have, here, extracted those parts of the Ombudsman’s report that are directly relevant to the fate of Mr Fletcher’s passport.

Mr David Fletcher

15th September 2015

Dear Mr Fletcher

Your complaint to the Ombudsman about the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

1. We received your complaint about the FCO from Sir Alan Hazelhurst MP. We have looked carefully at the papers you sent as well as the information your personal representative Mr James Ricketson sent to us. We also asked the FCO for more information about your complaint, and later met with them to discuss it in more detail.  

2. We found there was no evidence to confirm what had actually happened to your passport before it was cancelled, and this lack of record keeping was a failing. That failing caused you unnecessary confusion and distress.

The ‘distress’ caused to Mr Fletcher by the mysterious disappearance of his passport is of little consequence compared with the ‘distress’ it should cause you, as Foreign Minister, that  a British Embassy can simply lose track of the whereabouts of a passport in its possession!

Your complaint

3. We understand you complain the FCO cancelled your passport, leading to its destruction.  

Whenever a bureaucrat qualifies a statement with ‘we understand’ a perceptive recipient knows that s/he is about to be lied to.

7. The FCO has a worldwide network of embassies and consulates. They promote the U.K.'s interests overseas and are responsible for (amongst other things):

Safeguarding the UK’s national security by countering terrorism and weapons proliferation, and working to reduce conflict.

As will become apparent, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office did not have a clue how Mr Fletcher’s passport managed to leave the UK Embassy in Bankgkok undetected, where it went for a year or so, who returned it to the embassy or its whereabouts in the embassy until it was ‘found’!

10. In summary. You said you are innocent of the crime were convicted of, because you were not in Cambodia at the time it is alleged to have happened. You said your passport would have proved this because the dates of your time in Cambodia stamped inside. This is now impossible because your passport has been destroyed. You believe the FCO is also responsible for this.

13. Mr Ricketson has also provided us with more detail about your complaint. He said the FCO had given three contradictory versions of how your passport was destroyed, and they refuse to reconcile them. Mr Ricketson said the FCO had told you they had received your passport at the Bangkok embassy in July 2012 and had destroyed it. However, the documents you had received also suggested the Bangkok embassy had your passport between 28 July 2010 on 23 May 2011. The FCO have not explained why your passport left the embassy only to be returned over a year later.

In this ‘Age of Terror’, when fake  passports can be used to facilitate all sorts of international mischief, losing track of a British passport is incompetence of the worst kind.

14. Mr Ricketson also wanted to know who had ordered your passport to be destroyed. He wanted to know if the British Ambassador had been involved in this decision.

What the FCO told us

- your passport was cancelled because of the FCO's policy, it was then destroyed because of HMPO’s policy.

- you were told by a consular officer in December 2012 that your passport have been retained, when fact it already been cancelled. The consular officer in question had not checked the file properly.

- consular staff recognized you believe your passport will prove your innocence. They have therefore suggested alternative options for you to retain the same evidence, such as Thai and Cambodian immigration records.

Both Mr Fletcher and I have tried, with no success, to get this information from the Laos and Cambodian authorities. Mr Fletcher was in Laos, not Thailand, in March 2009.

17. The FCO acknowledged that their records were unclear about what actually happened to your passport.

Excuse me for belabouring the point but in this ‘Age of Terror’, with all records computerized, a British Embassy simply loses track of a passport in its possession! Doesn’t know what happened to it!

This does not instill much confidence in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s competence to be ‘fighting terrorism’.

Some of the papers suggest your passport was held at one time by the Thai Immigration Detention Centre (IDC). It is possible that they then passed it to the embassy. The FCO were unable to check in more details because the relevant member of the embassy staff had now left.

Oh, so no-one other than the member of embassy staff who has left to FCO is able to access the relevant computer file to discover what happened to Mr Fletcher’s passport! His name is Ray Keen. Perhaps someone from FCO could put through a phone call and see if he has any recollection of what happened to the passport!

The FCO could confirm that your passport has been found at the embassy and then because of this had been cancelled and then returned to HMPO to be destroyed.

So, Mr Fletcher’s passport mysteriously disappears from the British Embassy in Bangkok for a year, just as mysteriously reappears and no questions are asked as to where it has been, who has used it or, at least, been in possession of it!?

Where was the passport found? In a drawer, behind a couch? Had it been used by someone pretending to be Mr Fletcher, whom Embassy staff knew to be in a Thai prison?

18. The FCO accepted that a former staff member in Bangkok may have made a mistake by allegedly telling you they could keep your passport whilst you were in prison. They understand this conversation took place in December 2012. The FCO also said your passport have been cancelled in July 2012, (five months before the conversation question.) It appears someone did this without first checking the details.

‘May have made a mistake’!

This stretches credulity. The very kindest comment that can be made is that this ‘someone’ should be sacked for incompetence.

19. The FCO also gave us their computer notes from some of the contact with you. These included contacts on 29 June 2010 and 28 July 2010. The 29 June 2010 note says ‘follow up details of his passport, which at this moment which at this morning's visit I was not allowed to retrieve from the IDC, inquiries still ongoing.’

The 28 July 2010 note says ‘K will take (your) passport to the IDC tomorrow so he can draw his money from the Western Union.’

Our provisional findings.

The FCO's handling of your passport

21. It is clear there is a lot of confusion about what happened your passport. The situation is not improved by the lack of evidence from the FCO.

‘Confusion’ about the whereabouts of a passport in the care of a British Embassy! An understatement, surely!

In this ‘Age of Terror’ citizens of the UK  cannot be sure, if their passport should fall into the hands of the FCO, that it will not simply disappear without consular staff knowing (or, it seems, caring) where it had gone, in whose possession it was and just what nefarious use it might be put to!

What evidence we have found suggests that the Thai IDC had your passport in June 2010. In July 2010 there is a suggestion the embassy staff may have obtained the passport, as the note says ‘K’ will bring the passport to the IDC so you can access your funds. We do not then know what happened to the passport until it was cancelled in July 2012.

This admission, coming from the Ombudsman, does not instill confidence in the UK’s Foreign & Comonwealth Office!

Does it not fill you with dread, Mr Hammond, that a passport in the care of a British embassy could so easily fall into the hands of a terrorist or suchlike criminal?

22. It is possible the passport remained at the embassy until it was later discovered. Or the passport may have been returned to the IDC, but then later returned it back to the embassy.

It is also possible that a passport that the FCO allows to wander free of the Embassy that is taking care of it could be used in a terrorist attack or to commit some other form of international felony.

When we met with the FCO, they said they believed the latter was most likely. Unfortunately, due to the passage of time which has now passed, we will not be able to confirm exactly what happened.

Are we to assume, in this computer age, that no records about the whereabouts of UK passports in Thai Embassy care are kept on the Embassy computer? Not even in the case of a UK citizen resident in a Thai prison, fighting through Thai court, his extradition to Cambodia!?

As a result, we cannot make a finding about whether the embassy’s handling of your passport was maladministration. I should make it clear this does not mean that we have exonerated the embassy about this matter, but we have not criticized them either, as we do not have the evidence to do that.

If what the Ombudsman has described here is not ‘maladministration’ I’d love to know what he thinks is maladministration!

It would appear that all that a British Embassy has to do is destroy files, or lose them, or claim that the person who looked after the files has left the embassy, and the Ombudsman can claim (with a straight face!) that he does not have any evidence upon which to base a judgment!? Wow!

This is no better than the ‘a dog ate my homework’ excuse!

23. Whatever happened to your passport between June 2010 and July 2012, we know the embassy discovered it and cancelled it in July 2012. It appears the embassy did not check who the passport belonged to before they cancelled it. …

Here we enter Monty Python territory. Or should that be Kafka? Or Alice in Wonderland?

Before cancelling a passport it does not occur to the person doing the cancelling to flip it open and to see who it belongs to!?

“Oh, it belongs to Mr Fletcher! That name sounds familiar. I’ll type ‘David John Fletcher’ into the computer and see what comes up. Oh, he is in a Thai prison! Perhaps I’d best run this by the Ambassador before I cancel it!”

That the Ombudsman can make such a statement, as if it  constituted a credible explanation, excuse, makes one wonder if the Ombudsman is nothing other than a spin doctor whose job is to create the illusion that the disappearance (and ultimate destruction) of a passport is just the result of a series of innocent administrative errors!

There is no evidence that your passport was singled out for special treatment, or destroyed on the orders of senior member embassy staff (including the Ambassador). The fact that the embassy did not cross reference the passport with the people they were supporting at the time supports this.

Oh, so the fact that the relevant member of Embassy staff did not bother to open the passport, see Mr Fletcher’s name and photo and realize that he was in a Thai jail and might need his passport soon, is evidence that he had not been singled out for ‘special treatment’!? That the Ombudsman thinks that such an argument might be taken seriously says a lot about the contempt he feels for the intelligence of anyone (including Mr Fletcher) reading this report.

24. It appears that some members of the embassy staff gave you misleading information about your passport when they visited you in the IDC. This clearly caused you some confusion and distress about what happened your passport, particularly after you believed it could provide proof that you are not in Cambodia at the time the crime you were convicted of happened. We find much of this confusion could've been prevented if the FCO kept better records about what had happened your passport in 2010. We find this was a failing, and we also find the FCO have not put right the subsequent confusion and distress to you. We have therefore made a recommendation to the FCO to put it right. (see below).

Draft Recommendation

28. We recommend that within four weeks of the date of this report the FCO should apologize to you for the confusion about what happened your passport, which of course which was caused by their poor recordkeeping.

‘Poor recordkeeping’!

That the Ombudsman should think that a simple apology within 4 weeks would answer all questions about what happened to Mr Fletcher’s passport reveals just how contemptuous the Ombudsman is of Mr Fletcher’s intelligence and of the intelligence of others (including myself) who have an interest in why it is that the FCO destroyed evidence that it knew was relevant to a court case that Mr Fletcher would have to fight in Cambodia.

Questions abound, but clearly the Ombudsman sees his role as cutting these questions off at the pass with this absurd Kafkaesque explanation for the mysterious disappearance, reappearance and destruction of Mr Fletcher’s passport.

This would all be the stuff of black comedy were it not for the fact that Mr Fletcher has spent more than five years in jail now, without a trial and with zero support from the FCO; with the FCO’s complicity in keeping him in jail through its destruction of evidence of Mr Fletcher’s innocence.

The incompetence shown your FCO staff in relation to Mr Fletcher’s passport has occurred with your tacit approval Mr Hammond.

This is my 40^th letter to you. I don’t expect a response but I do want this to be on record so that you cannot, later, deny any knowledge of its contents. 

yours sincerely

James Ricketson