Hok Lundy: There remains no terrorist threat in Cambodia ... except for the CPP terrorizing poor people to rob their lands

FBI Has Helped Police Understand Terrorism, Chief Says

By Sok Khemara, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
09 January 2008

Since cooperation with a new FBI office began last year, Cambodian police have learned more about the strategies and tactics of terrorism, the chief of national police said in a recent interview.

Cambodian police have updated their expertise in the fight against terrorism, thanks to a series of meetings and exchanges of information with FBI agents, Gen. Hok Lundy said in a rare interview last week.

There remains no terrorist threat in Cambodia, he said.

"How those tactics and strategies of terrorists have so far developed is included in the meetings and exchange of information with the US FBI representatives in Cambodia, so that we can be updated on the development of the terrorists," he said.

The FBI opened a legislative attaché office in the US Embassy in March 2007, drawing criticism from human rights groups for its close work with Hok Lundy, who has denied accusations of involvement in drug or human trafficking.

FBI officials in Washington said cooperation with Hok Lundy was necessary to better work in the region, assessing terrorist threats and conducting other law enforcement.

"We think that there has been significant knowledge gained from the cooperation in order to strengthen the security of the country," Hok Lundy said.

Cambodian-American Laro Tan assigned as Legat for the FBI office in Phnom Penh

LEGAT PHNOM PENH
Our New Outpost in Southeast Asia

08/02/07
US FBI (www.fbi.gov)

When Laro Tan was a child, his family was forced to flee Cambodia during the brutal regime of the Khmer Rouge. Today, he’s back in his native land as an FBI agent working to stand up our new overseas office in its capital city of Phnom Penh.

The office—called a Legal Attaché or “Legat”—is one of some 60 Bureau outposts around the world. Each is headed by a special agent (also called a Legat) who serves as a formal member of the diplomatic staff in the U.S. Embassy and works to build close, mutually beneficial relationships with his or her international colleagues.

We call on these partnerships quite often. “So many of our investigations these days have an overseas connection,” says Tan, who was appointed acting Legat when the office officially opened in May. “We don’t have the authority to make arrests or track leads ourselves in other countries, so we go to our partners and ask for help. In return, we offer assistance in their cases with U.S. connections and encourage their agencies and officers to take advantage of the many training programs we offer.”

Why an office in Phnom Penh? Before, Cambodia was covered by the Bangkok Legat—which is more than 330 miles away from Phnom Penh—making relationship building more difficult. Now, Legat Tan handles both Cambodia and Vietnam, providing more on the ground coverage in the growing region of Southeast Asia.

The day-to-day work of the Legat. “It’s extremely busy, I can tell you that,” says Tan, who is permanently assigned to our Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate in Washington. “The FBI office in New York, say, might need help in tracking a suspect who has fled to Cambodia or who has bank accounts in this country. Or there might be an Asian gang in San Francisco that has ties to Cambodia or Vietnam that needs to be explored. And I’m constantly evaluating and providing assessments of threats that might migrate to U.S. shores.”

His specific partners include the Cambodian National Police, and in Vietnam, the Interpol office of the General Department of the Police, a division of the Ministry of Public Security.

Thanks to these relationships, in place long before the Legat was opened, we’ve shared several key successes in recent years:

• Information and support provided by Cambodian officials helped lead to the capture of wanted terrorist Riduan Bin Isamuddin—aka Hambali—who orchestrated the bombing in Bali that killed more than 200 people in October 2002. Hambali was arrested in Thailand in 2003.
• In November 2000, Cambodian Freedom Fighters tried to overthrow the government by attacking sites throughout Phnom Penh. A joint investigation led to the arrest of several of the subversives.

“In this day and age, the relationships we’ve built and continue to build in Cambodia and Vietnam are invaluable,” says Tan. “That’s why I’m here—to get to know my colleagues personally, to be a bridge between our countries. For me, especially as a native of Cambodia, I consider it an honor.”

Experts to FBI: Be Wary of Tradeoffs With New Office

Special Agent Thomas Fuentes, who is in charge of the FBI's overseas offices, says rights advocates should be happy to see the Bureau's new office in Phnom Penh.

Brian Calvert, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
22/06/2007

[Editor's note: this is the second in a two-part series examining the FBI's new office in Phnom Penh]

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation's expanded presence in Cambodia has renewed a broader debate over human rights in the war on terror, and observers warn that the US agency could be judged hashly by history.

The FBI is one of the US's leading counterterrorism agencies. Its new office in Phnom Penh drew fire from rights groups who said their job was made harder by the FBI's approval of Cambodia's security apparatus. Security experts say there are good reasons for the office, but the FBI must be careful to vet who it works with.

"It's a very slippery slope, especially in a country like Cambodia where there is so much corruption," said Zachary Abuza, a professor of political science at Simmons College in Boston and an expert on Southeast Asia.

The FBI should be careful dealing with Cambodia, he said, although the Bureau's presence could be positive.

"You like to think that they will have influence and be able to improve the quality of the services you are working with," he said. "And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't."

Cambodia is a major transshipment point for people, money and drugs in Southeast Asia, Abuza said, areas of interest for both the US State and Justice departments and a good reason to have an office in Cambodia, as the FBI seeks to expand the number of legal attaches around the world.

Meanwhile, the FBI's presence is not likely to make things worse, said Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington. The danger for the US, he said, is guilt by association with Cambodian rights abusers.

"I do think there's a risk that we will be seen as complicit in any future abuses they commit," he said. "And so that's the tradeoff."

Washington has likely determined that smart Cambodian policy means tending a working relationship, O'Hanlon said, even if it means giving abusive officials greater legitimacy. However, the FBI should not overreach.

"I think you also have to keep your own expectations in check, and the FBI should be careful here with its own rhetoric," O'Hanlon said. "They don't want to oversell the benefits of this collaboration for Cambodia's own quality of governance."

Thomas Fuentes, Special Agent in Charge of Overseas Operations for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, manages 75 offices around the world. The newest of these opened in Cambodia in March.

Fuentes said in a recent interview that so far the cooperation with Cambodian police has been productive. Fifty police trained with the FBI in the US Embassy last year, even before the new office opened in the capital. Although Fuentes won't give details, he said agencies from the two countries have ongoing investigations into a self-described anti-Hun Sen movement, the Cambodian Freedom Fighters, and the agencies have thwarted active terror plots.

So far, however, there is little evidence the FBI is entering a critical relationship with the Cambodian police.

"As a matter of course, we expect that we're going to have a relationship with a professional, honest, law-abiding police agency, and to date our relationship with the Cambodian National Police has been at the highest level of professionalism," Fuentes said.

It's that kind of rosy view that rights workers like Brad Adams, the Asia director for Human Rights Watch, are warning against.

"There is absolutely nothing professional about the Cambodian police," Adams said. "I mean, they are headed by a man who has been involved in extrajudicial executions, drug trafficking, human trafficking. His chief deputies are people who have well-documented records of the very same thing. That's an appalling statement, to suggest that they've been operating at the highest level of professionalism with the Cambodian police. That's nonsense. And any Cambodian who heard that would be shocked, because the police have a terrible reputation in the country, of being completely corrupt, and abusing people, not protecting them."

Lao Mong Hay, a Cambodian researcher at Hong Kong's Asian Human Rights Commission, indicated that in recent years, the FBI's own reputation has been damaged by the US's insistence to detain terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"Lately, the FBI, with regard to counterterrorism, has not been known as respecting human rights very well," he said.

Whether the FBI can overcome these concerns, in a country where human rights receive scant attention already, remains to be seen. For now, the office is an open question, a small attaché in the US Embassy, searching for terrorists and criminals, and not, it is hoped, befriending them.

FBI Defends Phnom Penh Office as Rights Tool

Special Agent Thomas Fuentes, who is in charge of the FBI's overseas offices, says rights advocates should be happy to see the Bureau's new office in Phnom Penh.

Lao Mong Hay and others say the FBI's new office has legitimized a sometimes brutal and exploitive police force and could therefore worsen Cambodia's rights environment.

Brian Calvert, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
15/06/2007

[Editor's note: this is the first in a two-part series examining the FBI's new office in Phnom Penh]

When the Federal Bureau of Investigation, one of the US's leading counterterrorism agencies, christened a new office in Phnom Penh, it drew pointed rebukes from groups critical of Cambodia's grim human rights record.

Security experts say there are good reasons for the office, and a top FBI official told VOA Khmer recently that advocates should be happy to see the FBI in country. But not everyone is convinced, and the FBI's office has opened a prickly debate over the protection of human rights in an expanding war on terror.

From his office in the J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington, Thomas Fuentes, Special Agent in Charge of Overseas Operations for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, manages 75 offices around the world. The newest of these opened in Cambodia in March. The FBI needs a branch in Cambodia to help with regional counterterrorism and other legal efforts, Fuentes said in a recent interview. A strengthened relationship with the national police—something rights groups have been quick to censure—has been a natural byproduct of that expansion.

"The efforts we've had in the past in various investigations have been very successful, and we know that it's a partnership that we would like to have become stronger," Fuentes said.

The FBI and the Cambodian police have conducted training and investigations together, and the FBI is willing to help the national police address human trafficking and the sex trade, pervasive problems often bemoaned by human rights groups.

None of that would be possible without close cooperation with the national police, Fuentes said.

That relationship has critics worried and is at the center of a debate over how committed the US is to the promotion of human rights abroad.

"Our police and their chief haven't had [a] good reputation at all in Cambodia. They have, I think, violated human rights quite a lot over the years," said Lao Mong Hay, a Cambodian researcher at the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong.

Lao Mong Hay and others say the FBI's new office has legitimized a sometimes brutal and exploitive police force and could therefore worsen Cambodia's rights environment.

Fuentes disagrees. With a fulltime office in Cambodia, the FBI is more likely to learn of rights abuses, which could help the United States address them, he said.

"You're going to have a much better opportunity to be told of something that may be wrong or needs to be addressed," he said. "So if individuals, if various groups have concerns about what may be going on in Cambodia, they should be more supportive of the FBI being there fulltime, instead of less."

An outspoken critic of the FBI's role in Cambodia, past and present, has been Human Rights Watch.

The international group has repeatedly called for investigations into alleged crimes by National Police Chief Hok Lundy, including involvement in the 1997 grenade attack that killed at least 16 Cambodians and injured one American, as well as extrajudicial killings and human and drug trafficking.

The FBI investigated the grenade attack but released no findings implicating Hok Lundy, and the police chief has denied any involvement in the crimes. Fuentes hosted Hok Lundy in Washington in April, instantly drawing the vitriol of Human Rights Watch and others. If the FBI now engages in a "critical relationship" with the Cambodian police, the new office would be fine, said Brad Adams, Asia director for Human Rights Watch. But such a relationship is unlikely.

"It's perfectly appropriate where there are serious international criminal syndicates, whether it's human trafficking or counterterrorism or something, to work with law enforcement authorities in any country," Adams said. "But you've got to know what you're dealing with, and here you're dealing with an extremely corrupt and violent force that has never put public safety as its first order of business, or crime solving. It's all about making money and controlling the political system."

Those concerns aside, analysts say that an expanded presence in Southeast Asia will help the US fill a regional intelligence gap.

"I think one of the reasons why the FBI has opened an office in Cambodia is because that part of mainland Southeast Asia is a big black hole," said Peter Chalk, a senior policy analyst at the Rand Corporation.

Conditions in Cambodia could make it attractive to terrorists, even if they don't directly threaten Cambodians, he said.

"We haven't really seen any concerted attacks within the region, but, you know, the lawlessness of the region, a Muslim population there, porous borders, corruption, all of those factors avail a fairly conducive logistical environment" for terrorist groups, he said.

Terrorists are attracted to countries with weak rule of law, where they think they're safe, the FBI's Fuentes said. Having an office in Phnom Penh will prevent small clues to their whereabouts from slipping away.

"You know, it may be one little piece of the puzzle, but if we're getting information provided by the Cambodians, and we're getting information from the Thai and from the Indonesian national police and the Malaysians and the Australian federal police—all those little pieces may fit together to form a picture," he said.

Adams, of Human Rights Watch, said US officials must be sure they are getting true terrorists, not fall guys, from the Cambodians.

"I'm sure that [the government has] invented potential terror plots that the US is in no position to verify and wrapped them up," Adams said.

A better tactic would be bolstering Cambodia's weak judicial system and eliminating the culture of corruption that makes Cambodia so attractive to terrorists in the first place, Adams said.

"One of the reasons they say that terrorism is a threat in Cambodia is because the country is so corrupt, top to bottom, including its court system, that basically anybody can come and go in that country and buy protection and hide out there, and that's what the US was worried about," he said.

The FBI opens a permanent office in Phnom Penh

Wednesday, April 04, 2007
By Kang Kallyan and Soren Seelow
Cambodge Soir
Unofficial translation from French by Luc Sâr

Click here to read Cambodge Soir’s article in French

"Cambodia is an ideal refuge for terrorists" - General Hok Lundy, National Police chief

The FBI opened Monday a permanent office in Phnom Penh. According to Hok Lundy, the national police chief, the opening of this satellite office was done in conjunction with the fight against terrorism.

Jeff Daigle, the US embassy spokesman, declared that the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), the US federal police agency, opened its office in Phnom Penh on Monday – the 60th office the agency opened outside the US territory. In Asia, the FBI has offices in Bangkok, Beijing, Hong Kong, Djakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Seoul, Singapore, Tokyo, as well as in Canberra and Sydney in Australia.

The FBI office in Phnom Penh, housed inside the US embassy building, is currently staffed by Cary Gleicher, its temporary representative, whose assignment will last three months. The FBI is currently recruiting a permanent staff in the US who could arrive in Phnom Penh within this year, Jeff Daigle said. According to the latter, the FBI presence in Cambodia is not due to any particular reason, but that it answers to the “natural progress” of the “good cooperation” between the two countries.

According to Hok Lundy, the opening of this office answers most of all to the fight against terrorism. “Up to now, we collaborated with the [FBI] Bangkok office. With the FBI cooperation, we already arrested in 2001, CFF (Cambodian Freedom Fighters) members whose US chief planned to topple the government, and also terrorists linked to the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) which planned attacks in Phnom Penh in 2003. Cambodia is an ideal refuge for terrorists, therefore, it is important for the FBI to open a permanent office here,” Hok Lundy declared.

The FBI is in charge of fighting more than 200 federal crimes committed. Placed under the supervision of the US Justice Department, the FBI receives its fundings and assignments from the latter. The FBI is the federal agency which has the largest authority when it comes to investigation. With its mission statement of “protect and defend the USA,” the FBI assignments include the fight against terrorism, counter-espionage, fight against organized crime, human trafficking, drug trafficking, and also general intelligence gathering. The agency uses for its motto, words starting with the agency’s initial letters: “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.” In 1996, the agency had 23 offices overseas. Ten years later, the number tripled.

The “Bureau of Investigation” (BOI) was formed in 1908 to fight against organized crime. In between the two world wars, its power stretched to respond to difficulties faced by local police to enforce the law during the prohibition era, it was only in 1935 that the agency’s name was changed to “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”