Ex-envoy slams Khmer Rouge kidnap finding

David Wilson

September 19, 2012
By Belinda Merhab, AAP

A coronial finding clearing the Australian government's actions over the kidnapping and murder of backpacker David Wilson by the Khmer Rouge is a "travesty of justice", a former Australian diplomat says.

A 14-year inquest has found Australian government officials in Cambodia made the release of Mr Wilson their highest priority and they cannot be criticised for their handling of negotiations.

Alastair Gaisford, who was stationed in Cambodia at the time of Mr Wilson's kidnapping by the Khmer Rouge in July 1994, said the finding was riddled with factual errors and labelled it a "travesty of justice".

"If inquests are about getting to the truth, that's not the case in the Victorian jurisdiction," Mr Gaisford told reporters outside the Victorian Coroners Court on Wednesday.

Ransom bungle alleged

Tuesday, 08 November 2011
David Boyle
The Phnom Penh Post

Political brinksmanship between Cambodia’s then co-prime ministers and inaction by the governments of three backpackers taken hostage by the Khmer Rouge in 1994 led to their deaths, a former Australian diplomat has alleged.

Australian David Wilson, Briton Mark Slater and Frenchman Jean-Michel Braquet were slain by Khmer Rouge insurgents in September, 1994 after being taken hostage during an ambush on a train in Preah Sihanouk province that July which left 13 Cambodians dead.

Before the men were executed, Cambodian armed forces led an assault on the Khmer Rouge-controlled area of Phnom Voar, where they were held hostage.

Australian teen's prison term upheld in Cambodia

Thursday, October 7, 2010
Reuters

Cambodia's Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a 13-year jail term for an Australian teenager caught carrying heroin en route to Hong Kong, a sentence that angered rights groups when it was first passed in 2005.

Gordon Vuong was caught with 2.1 kg (4.6 lb) of heroin at Phnom Penh airport while traveling to Hong Kong where traffickers had promised to pay him US$1,300, the court heard five years ago.

“This is not right,” his lawyer, Kong Heng, said on the sentence. “He committed the crime when he was only a minor, he was under pressure from traffickers and, as usual for teenagers, he didn't think more carefully when he did it.”

A number of websites have created petitions seeking his transfer to Australia, citing poor prison conditions in Cambodia.

Cambodian police say labourers killed Aussie

Wed Jan 6 2010
By Henri Paget
ninemsn (Australia)

Police are hunting a gang of construction workers who they believe bashed an Australian man to death with tree branches in Cambodia.

John Edward Thompson, 47, was found dead early last week near a construction site on a deserted road leading to the five-star Sokha hotel in Sihanoukville.

Staff from a kiosk at the construction site told police they saw a small group of labourers drinking together in the hours leading up to the late-night killing, the Phnom Penh Post reports.

Chrann Chamroeun, a journalist for the newspaper, told ninemsn the area where the NSW man was killed was a strange place for a foreigner to be at night.

"It's very quiet around that area ... police have said travelling there at night-time there is not safe."

Thompson had been in Cambodia for more than a year before his death and had reportedly owned a bar in Sihanoukville's popular nightspot Victory Hill.

Various Cambodian news reports have quoted police as saying he ran into debt with the bar and was homeless and living in a Buddhist pagoda before the murder.

Mr Chamroeun told ninemsn that Thompson's 22-year-old Cambodian girlfriend Van Lina said "he was carrying just 2000 riels (A$0.52) at the time of his death".

The deserted location of the murder has raised questions over what Thompson was doing on the road alone at the time.

Unconfirmed reports on Cambodian internet forums, including Sihanoukville Online, claim he was killed over long-standing debts.

Local police are reportedly unsure whether the killing was part of a robbery or an act of revenge.

"Earlier, police told me the suspects were involved with drugs," Mr Chamroeun said.

"I haven't been able to get any confirmation that he owed money."

The case has captured the attention of the Cambodian media, with one news website releasing a graphic photograph of the crime scene.

The Australian Embassy in Cambodia was unable to provide information on the killing when contacted last night.

Australian man murdered in Cambodia

December 29, 2009
AFP

An Australian man has been murdered in a popular Cambodian seaside resort, police say.

Officers identified the victim as John Edward Thompson, 47, who was killed early on Monday morning in the southern town of Sihanoukville, according to the local deputy police chief Kao Ratana.

"It is a case of murder. We are investigating the killing and we have not yet concluded what the motive was," he said by telephone on Tuesday.

Kao Ratana declined to say how the man was killed, but local reports said he was clubbed to death with wooden sticks in a robbery.

A spokesman for the Australian embassy in Phnom Penh said they had been informed of the death by police.

Aussie found dead in Cambodian jail cell

03 May 2008
DPA

An Australian national has been found dead in his Cambodian jail cell, officials and family said.

Bart "Lucky" Lauwaert, a former teacher, had been serving a 20-year sentence for child sex offences in a case which was spearheaded by local rights group, the Cambodian Women's Crisis Centre (CWCC).

In a phone interview from Siem Reap prison, 400 kilometres north of the capital, after his last avenue of appeal was closed last month, Lauwaert again alleged he had been "set up" by people trying to garner donor aid from high profile arrests and threatened suicide.

A prison official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Lauwaert had not been on suicide watch and no formal cause of death had been established, although heart failure had not been ruled out.

Lauwaert, 41, was arrested with fellow Australian Clinton Rex Betterridge in 2002 and the pair was charged with molesting more than a dozen Cambodian girls aged under 15 in Siem Reap town.

The case became controversial in 2006 when all the girls who had originally testified against the men in Siem Reap court recanted in the Cambodian Appeals Court, claiming they were promised financial rewards by the CWCC for their testimony.

The CWCC said the girls had been coerced by a paedophile ring, but despite his 10-year sentence being upheld in absentia, Betterridge was released the same day from an Australian jail where he had been held since jumping bail and fleeing Cambodia.

Then-Australian Justice Minister Chris Ellison also ordered a full investigation into any Australian aid supplied to the CWCC.

The CWCC strenuously denies any wrongdoing, pointing to continued funding from highly reputable donors including America's USAid and a decade-long record dotted with awards and accolades.

A former Siem Reap judge, Tan Senarong, has publicly admitted his sister works for the CWCC Siem Reap, but denies she works in any area of the organisation where a conflict of interest could arise.

One final foreigner remains in jail from a CWCC spearheaded investigation. New Zealand national Graham Robert Cleghorn has also claimed he was set up by powerful interests wanting his valuable land in Siem Reap, which has been sold since his 2004 arrest.

He is also in poor health, according to his family and a doctor's report, and has also threatened suicide if his appeals fail.

The CWCC founder and director in charge when the foreign men were arrested, Oung Chanthol, resigned last year citing fatigue over the controversy and a need to spend more time with her children.