Cambodia frees Frenchman linked to scandal [-French Exocet may have somthing to do with it?]

French Exocet missile

July 18, 2012
By Sopheng Cheang
The Associated Press

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia – Cambodia has released a French citizen detained for nearly a month for alleged links to China’s biggest political scandal in years, a government spokesman said Wednesday.

Police released Patrick Devillers on Tuesday after a request from China to do so, Cambodian Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak said. It was not immediately clear why China made the request.

At Beijing’s request, Devillers was detained June 13 for possible links to the death in China last November of British businessman Neil Heywood, but he was never charged with any crime.

Cambodia had said it would not extradite him to China or France unless it obtained more proof of wrongdoing.

Heywood had close ties to Bo Xilai, a Chinese political high-flier who was ousted as Communist party chief of Chongqing city. But Bo fell from power after his former police chief and longtime aide fled to a U.S. consulate and divulged suspicions that Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, was involved in Heywood’s death.

Bo was subsequently removed as Chongqing party secretary in March and then suspended as a politburo member amid speculation he tried to quash an investigation of his wife and a household employee over the Briton’s death.

Though authorities in China initially said Heywood died from either excess drinking or a heart attack, they have since named Gu as a suspect. She faces criminal charges.

News reports have said that Devillers, an architect, was closely linked to Bo, Gu and Heywood, and had helped Bo rebuild the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian when Bo was the city’s mayor in the 1990s.

China has considerable influence in Cambodia, having provided millions of dollars in aid over the past decade.