As I was in Bangkok and Ricketson was in Phnom Penh, the exchange was a routine swapping of information among journalists intending to cover Rainsy’s return. The same day Ricketson sent me a copy of an e-mail sent to him from Rainsy saying the Opposition Leader planned to fly to Phnom Penh the next evening from South Korea. Accused Australian spy James Ricketson attends a court hearing in Phnom Penh. Credit:Nara Lon Ricketson replied to Rainsy: “I have just heard on the journalist grapevine that a warrant for your arrest has been issued. If this is true, I am here in Phnom Penh to cover anything and anything.” Rainsy cancelled his return, fearing arrest.

Ricketson said after a two-hour court grilling late on Monday he had been questioned for 20 minutes at a previous hearing about his use of the word “grapevine.” James Ricketson has lost weight and is sharing a small cell with over 140 prisoners. Credit:AP “It’s ridiculous… they didn’t know what it meant,” he said as a guard pushed him into a holding room packed with prisoners waiting to be transferred back to jail. “It’s like a zoo... look at it. A human zoo,” Ricketson shouted. Appearing agitated with a head gash caused when he bumped into a beam in one of Cambodia’s harshest jails, Ricketson said he has faced questioning about 23 emails taken from more than 15,000 on his computer.

“They are all innocuous. They have absolutely no evidence,” Ricketson said earlier as he was pulled down a flight of steps at the court. Ricketson, an award-winning filmmaker from Sydney, faces up to 10 years jail if convicted of espionage. He was arrested by more than a dozen police, handcuffed and carried by the arms and legs from Cambodia's waterfront in June last year shortly after visiting a rubbish dump where he was providing aid to scavengers. In this photo from Cambodian website Fresh News, Australian filmmaker James Ricketson is seen apparently operating a drone at a rally. Earlier that day he was photographed flying a drone over a rally by supporters of Rainsy’s Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP). The party has been targeted in a sweeping crackdown on political freedoms in the country ruled by strongman Hun Sen for more than three decades. The party has been dissolved and its leaders are either in jail, in hiding or have fled the country.

Loading Government-aligned media outlets in Phnom Penh have accused Ricketson of being an "important spy" and linked him to a supposed CNRP conspiracy to topple the Hun Sen regime in an Arab Spring-style uprising. But analysts, diplomats and human rights groups say Hun Sen, a former commander of the murderous Khmer Rouge, has concocted the claim to justify a campaign to destroy the opposition and silence his critics ahead of elections mid this year. I met Ricketson about five years ago when I was researching a story on Cambodia’s orphanages and we kept in touch. He had been campaigning on behalf of a Cambodian mother to have two of her children released from an orphanage.

For years Ricketson was a controversial figure in Phnom Penh, where he campaigned for various causes including the release of a British man jailed in Prey Sar on child sex charges, whom he insists is innocent. Loading He spent much of his time in Cambodia helping street beggars and rubbish dump scavengers. My dealings with him were as a media colleague and I saw nothing to suggest he was a spy. During nine months in jail Ricketson has lost a lot of weight and shares a 16-metre by six-metre cell block with more than 140 other prisoners.

There are three squat toilets where the prisoners also bathe and wash pots and dishes. “It’s bedlam in the morning and evening when you need to bathe,” he said. Ricketson will be returned to court for further questioning on February 27. Jessie Ricketson, his son, was in court and said the hearing “gives us further proof that there is no evidence to support the charge in this case.” “Hearing after hearing it’s the same thing, no evidence,” he said. “It’s painful to know that he is still locked up when there is no evidence against him.”

He said his father “is a good man with a good heart who has always sought to look after the Cambodian people.” “My dad is not a spy," he said. A petition calling on the Turnbull government to intervene on Ricketson’s behalf has been signed by more than 60,000 people. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has written to her Cambodian counterpart about the case but her office has not made the letter public.