# 74 for Dr Kek Pung, President of LICADHO, an invitation to meet someone with important information to impart about APLE

Dr Kek Pung

President, LICADHO

Phnom Penh

Cambodia

23^rd Dec 2014

Dear Dr Pung

The avalanche of material sent to me regarding APLE continues apace, but what can I do with it? Is there anyone interested in evidence of APLE’S unethical and criminal activities? It seems not. APLE has a ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card in Cambodia. No-one will say in public what they freely say in private. This is the same dynamic that allowed Somaly Mam to continue with her Foundation based on lies for so many years. Her lies were common knowledge in Cambodia for many years before she was finally exposed and had to stand down. How many years will it take for APLE to be exposed as a result of the silence of NGOs such as LICADHO?

I have located one person whose testimony regarding APLE you should hear in person. I think you would find it next to impossible, having heard what this person has to say, to continue to associate with APLE any longer. S/he is scared to speak out for fear of reprisals but will do so if s/he can be provided with some guarantees that s/he will not be targeted in any way by APLE.

This is a matter that needs to be dealt with very diplomatically. I would suggest the following:

I come to Cambodia and arrange for a safe place where this person could meet you and others. I would like there to be present a highly placed representative of (a) both the Cambodian Ministries of Justice and the Interior, (b) LICADHO and ADHOC, (c) SISHA, (d) the British Embassy and (e) the media.

All on this list would be interested to hear what this person has to say, decide on the veracity of what they hear and make their own independent enquiries. And all would be in a position, one way or another, to provide him/her with protection.

I have included below an email interchange that took place in 2006 between Katherine Keane, James Dunmore and Thierry Darnaudet. This interchange occurred at a time when Naly Pilorge was deeply involved with APLE and before she felt it necessary to hide her association with the NGO.

Whilst the whole interchange provides some interesting insights into APLE’s modus operandi, it is Thierry Darnaudet’s final contribution to the dialogue that reveals the most – both about Darnaudet and APLE. (see below)

Finally, I have heard from three different sources now that Naly Pilorge is telling anyone interested that she (and by extension LICADHO) know much more about the David Fletcher case than I do and that I am mistaken in my advocacy on his behalf. Some points that need to be made about Naly’s quite public assertions:

(1) I have all the court documents relating to Mr Fletcher’s case and believe that I am the only person who does.

(2) I am advocating on behalf of Mr Fletcher’s right to a fair trial held in accordance with the Cambodian Code of Criminal Procedure. Any and all people accused of crimes in Cambodia – be they Khmer or non-Khmer – should be entitled to a fair trial. If the evidence suggests that Mr Fletcher is guilty of rape, he should remain in jail.

(3) If Naly really does know more about the David Fletcher case than I do (and, by extension the Phnom Penh Municipal Court) the appropriate venue to present this information is in a properly constituted court of law.

(4) I would be very surprised in Naly was in possession of evidence that Mr Fletcher did rape Yang Dany given that she has admitted he did not (to myself and two other journalists) and the physiological evidence (her intact hymen) is very strongly supportive of this fact. However, it is not for either Naly or myself (or anyone else) to weigh up evidence such as this. It is up to a properly constituted court working in accordance with the Cambodian Code of Criminal Procedure.

(5) It is clear from numerous sources now that APLE has contempt for the Cambodian judiciary’s ability to arrive at judgments based on evidence rather than on who can afford to pay the biggest bribe. In order to obtain the verdicts it feels to be fair and just (and in order to keep up its arrest and conviction rate) APLE has set itself up as investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury and uses its influence to obtain the verdicts that it wants. In so doing, APLE is not merely bypassing the Cambodian judicial system but is actively corrupting it. If LICADHO is not aware of this, I can only say that you and others who run LICAHDO (particularly the lawyers) are either blind or have chosen to turn a blind eye.

(6) If Naly really does believe that she is in a better position to pass judgment on Mr Fletcher than the Phnom Penh Municipal Court, she is setting herself up, as does APLE, as investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury. And, having decided that Mr Fletcher must be guilty of rape (based on evidence that she feels under no compunction to provide to the court), she does not want to leave it to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court to arrive at a verdict different from her own.

Difficult though it might be, given that Naly is your daughter, I believe that you should ask her if she is in possession of information and/or evidence of Mr Fletcher’s guilt of the charge of rape that I am not aware of, that the Phnom Penh Municipal Court is not aware of, that the media is not aware of. If she is in possession of such evidence and is withholding it, Naly is herself perverting the course of justice.

If the three correspondents who have contacted me are wrong in their assertion that Naly knows more about this case than I do, I fail to understand why it is that LICADHO does not publically call for Mr Fletcher to be provided with a fair trial when it is blindingly obvious that he has been denied one.

In the event that you are interested in hearing, first hand, the testimony of someone who can provide first hand information about APLE I will come to Cambodia in January and set up a meeting along the lines I have outlined above.

best wishes

James Ricketson

2006 CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN APLE AND JAMES DUNMORE - a Canadian NGO who planned to set up his own organisation in Sihanoukville.



From APLE's ex-Country Director Katherine Keane to James Dunsmore after a mobile phone text message.



Dear James, 

I write in response to your text message of today:

'I am your informant putting myself and my future Charity work at risk by helping you carry out your mandate. I call your management of sensitive volunteer field assets into question and request an official appointment with your agency's National Director at your earliest convenience. I will travel to the capital to facilitate this if that is necessary. RSVP ASAP.'



I feel that it is best that I reply to this text message via email.



First, no appointment with our National Director is necessary as I personally am taking over that position in two weeks and will be handling all such matters. 



Second, myself and other APLE staff are extremely busy handling a multitude of responsibilities and tasks and as such must make time-management decisions based on carefully considered priorities. 

It is not practical that we respond to every demand for an immediate appointment made by someone claiming to have urgent information. Your insistence on meeting during my personal time on Wednesday night for a matter which you claimed was urgent (but in fact was not) is an example.



Third, as you can imagine we do not hold meetings with people providing us with information in our office as the location is best kept quiet and our office contains much sensitive information. We have undercover staff working for us and as a result must respect their privacy. Instead, we choose other options for communication: 

- meeting in various locations in town which we know to be safe, friendly places where we can discuss sensitive matters in private 
(i.e.Starfish Cafe or small Hotel)

- telephone

- email

APLE respects the confidential nature of all information and the privacy of all those who provide us with that information. 



I must admit to finding your insistence that a telephone is not a 'secure channel' for discussion in Cambodia a little strange. Your refusal to email me the information you claim to have today rather than meeting in person is also troubling considering your apparent great concern for being seen in public with APLE personnel.



Fourth, I find it a troubling allegation and do not understand your claim that providing APLE with information places your future charity work at risk. My understanding is that you are working part-time as an English teacher at a school for Cambodian children. APLE cooperates with many child-rights organizations working in Sihanoukville and experiences no problem in this regard. 

If your concerns of our 'dedication' are indeed so great then I would recommend that you simply choose in future not to contact APLE staff. APLE will of course maintain the confidentiality of any information provided with you to this date.



Yours faithfully,

Katherine Keane

Technical Advisor

Action Pour Les Enfants

 Sihanoukville, Cambodia

...to be continued...

# 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

# 72 to Ms Emily Barry re 22nd Dec deadline for Mr Fletcher to make a complaint to the Ombudsman

James Ricketson

316 Whale Beach Road

Palm Beach 2108

Sydney, Australia

jamesricketson@gmail.com

Emily Barry

Customer Service Manager

Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman

Millbank Tower

Millbank

London

SW1P 4QP

Dear Ms Barry

re 22^nd Dec deadline for complaint to Ombudsman

I am responding on Mr Fletcher’s behalf to your email to him regarding the 22^nd Dec deadline to make a complaint about the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. Mr Fletcher has asked me to do so because, as you are aware, he is not in a position to advocate appropriately on his own behalf. Whilst I have put this in writing several times before, let me do so again lest there be any misunderstanding.

And let me attach, again, the hand-written, thumb-printed and signed letter from Mr Fletcher dated 10^th Sept 2014 in which he makes clear his request that I be allowed to act on his behalf.

The practical reality of Mr Fletcher’s life in jail vis a vis documents and communication are as follows:

(1) Documents cannot be posted to or from the jail in which Mr Fletcher is incarcerated.

(2) Documents cannot be delivered to Mr Fletcher in jail, or removed from the jail, other than by the British Embassy or a lawyer – which he cannot afford.

(3) The British Embassy refuses to assist Mr Fletcher with either the delivery of documents to the jail or taking them from the jail and delivering them on his behalf. One upshot of this is that Mr Fletcher was unable to deliver certain legal documents to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court within the required time-frame. The non-delivery of these documents comprised the sole reason why the judges at the Phnom Penh Municipal Court refused to allow Mr Fletcher the ‘re-trial’ on 20^th Nov that they had promised 3 weeks earlier.

Had the British Embassy in Cambodia seen its job as assisting Mr Fletcher in his quest for a fair trial, as opposed to thwarting his every effort to acquire one, the outcome in court on 20^th Nov could well have been quite different – especially in light of the fact that it was, by then, abundantly clear from well-documented evidence that Mr Fletcher could not have raped Yang Dany. (This evidence being (a) the Sept 2010 doctors report that Yang Dany’s hymen was intact after two ‘brutal rapes’ and (b) Yang Dany’s admission that no rapes had occurred.)

(4) When I am in Phnom Penh I can smuggle small numbers of documents into and out of the jail. This is, of course, illegal, but neither Mr Fletcher nor myself have much choice if I am to assist him in the conveyance of documents. 

(5) When I am not in Phnom Penh Mr Fletcher must rely on a prison guard to smuggle documents in and out of jail. For this illegal service he must pay money. Mr. Fletcher had all his money stolen last month and so cannot, in Dec 2014, get documents in or out of jail.

I am not in Phnom Penh and able to smuggle them and cannot afford to return to Cambodia to assist him at this time. Given the refusal of the FCO to deliver documents to me in Australia, as Mr Fletcher requested, I may be left with no choice but to travel to Cambodia early in the new year with the express purpose of smuggling documents out of jail so that I can post them to a lawyer in the United Kingdom.

(6) As you know, Mr Fletcher has sporadic use of a $20 mobile phone. His use of it is illegal and yet you are relying on him to break Cambodian law in order to fill out forms online by 22^nd Dec. If he were to be caught using the phone he could get into trouble and, no doubt, the very same Embassy that refuses to assist with the delivery of documents, would offer Mr Fletcher no assistance at all.

That you are recommending Mr Fletcher fill out online forms by breaking Cambodian law raises some interesting ethical and legal questions. ‘Interesting’ is the operative word. They are not really worth exploring because you know, the FCO knows, all who work at the British Embassy in Phnom Penh know that there is no rule of law in Cambodia. If you can afford to pay the right people you can have free use of a mobile phone in prison. If you can afford to pay the right people you can have anyone convicted of whatever offence you like. (I have had first hand experience with this, having been found guilty (in absentia) of committing a crime that does not exist on the Cambodian statutes – “threatening to dishonour”.)

(7) The internet signal in the jail is sometimes non-existent and always weak. It can take several hours for an email to travel from Phnom Penh to Sydney. The signal is so weak that it is impossible for Mr Fletcher to fill out online forms of the kind that you request him to fill out by 22^nd Dec.

Even if Mr Fletcher was in a position to fill out forms by 22^nd Dec there would be little point in his doing so for the following reasons:

(a) In order for Mr Fletcher to make a proper complaint about the Foreign & Commonwealth Office it is both appropriate and necessary that he be in possession of as much information as he can be regarding his  treatment this past four and a half years at the hands of the FCO.

(b) Given that Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond, Ambassador Mark Kent, Julian Blewett, Ross Allen, Nigel Eustace and others refuse to answer any questions put to them by him, or by myself, it is necessary for Mr Fletcher to obtain all the information he needs to make a complaint to your office through the acquisition of documents in accordance with The Data Protection Act of 1998 (DPA). This process has been complicated by:

1. The glacial speed at which the FCO has responded to Mr Fletcher’s Data Protection requests. The first tranche of documents were delivered to Mr Fletcher in prison only three days ago.

2. The documents are not arranged in chronological sequence. They have been jumbled up in such a way as to make Mr Fletcher’s job of placing them in sequence as difficult as possible. This will take him some time. And, in the new year, there will be a further tranche of documents delivered to him. These also, it seems, will be arranged in no chronological sequence and it will require a good deal of time and energy on Mr Fletcher’s part to get them in order.

3. Many of the most significant documents that have been requested have not been included in the first tranche delivered to Mr Fletcher. Sue Bennett has clearly been instructed to be as obstructive as possible; to make Mr Fletcher ask again, and possibly yet again, for documents he asked for months ago.

It may well be, in making a formal complaint to the Ombudsman, that the documents the FCO refuses to release are more important than the ones it does release. We will not know this for sure until Mr Fletcher has exhausted his capacity to acquire documents through the Data Protection Act 1998.

4. Once this point has been reached (and it may be a few months off) the task will then be to get all of these documents out of the jail and into the hands of a lawyer in the United Kingdom. Mr Fletcher does not wish to make a formal complaint to your office that is ‘half-baked’ and lacking in the kind of clarity that your office requires. This process could also take some time, though I do not know how long as (a) we do not have all the documents as yet and (b) the acquisition of the appropriate lawyer in the UK has not yet been finalized.

It is already clear, from the documents that were released a few days ago in relation to Mr Fletcher’s passport, that the Foreign & Commonwealth Office has, to put it as politely as I can, played fast and loose with the truth. Ross Allen in particular. Or, to be more diplomatic still, Mr Allen has been parsimonious with the truth. See:

http://cambodia440.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/71-freedom-in-information-data.html

Given that I am not in Cambodia at present I am in the process of arranging for these particular passport-related documents to be smuggled out of the jail and sent to me. If what Mr Fletcher has told me is true (and I have every reason to believe that it is, as he has quoted from the documents verbatim), on the question of the destruction of his passport alone various senior FCO officials should be charged by the police with having conspired to pervert the course of justice.

Whilst a formal complaint to your office may be some months off I will continue to copy you on my letters to Foreign Secretary Mr Phillip Hammond. I will be publishing these on my blog also. My reason for doing so is probably clear by now. I have had considerable experience with bureaucracies this past 40 years and with spin doctors this past decade. I know how they operate. By placing all my correspondence with Mr Hammond on record it will be very difficult for even a first class spin doctor to present, at some point in the future, the proposition that Mr Hammond was unaware of the many and varied ways in which the Foreign & Commonwealth Office has, for four and a half years, abrogated Mr Fletcher’s legal and human rights and gone out of its way to thwart him in his attempts to be provided with a fair trial. The destruction of his passport is the most blatant example of this.

best wishes

James Ricketson