Foreigners could spend six months in detention before case goes to court, reports suggest

A group of 10 foreigners, including five Britons, charged with producing pornographic pictures and material in Cambodia offended local standards of morality but they should be deported rather than jailed, their lawyer has said.

The accused allegedly posted images of themselves imitating sexual positions, while fully clothed and laughing, at a party in Siam Reap, near the tourist destination of Angkor Wat. They have claimed they are innocent and one of the arrested said that none of those detained was in the offending pictures.

They face up to a year in prison and could spend six months in detention before the case goes to court, reports suggest.

The lawyer, Sourng Sophea, said some of the photos posted showed his clients at a party, some drinking by a swimming pool and some of the women in bikinis, but none showed them having sex or exposing themselves. He said that, according to the law, they should be deported or have their visas cancelled but should not be held in pretrial detention.

“I admit that they have done something wrong according to morality in Cambodian society, but their crimes did not warrant them being charged or put in jail,” Sourng told the Associated Press.

He said when the 10 had been taken into custody but not yet charged he sent a three-page note to the Siem Reap provincial police and prosecutors, asserting they had not committed any serious wrongdoing, were innocent of producing pornography, and should be released – but his plea was rejected.

Sourng said he did not know what conditions were like for his clients as he had yet to meet them in jail. Pictures have emerged showing some of them with their heads shaved wearing orange prison uniforms.

Sourng said the families of some of the detainees had contacted him by phone from overseas but none had visited so far.

The five British men are Vincent Harley Robert Hook, 35; Daniel Richard Leeming Jones, 30; Thomas Alexander Jeffries, 22; Billy Stevens, 21; and Paul Francis Harris, 32.

Harris’s father, Guy Harris, told Mail Online that the offending images, supposedly taken at a “Let’s Get Wet” pool party, actually dated back five years - well before his bar manager son arrived in Cambodia.

Job Robertus van der Wel, from the Netherlands, 22, the Canadians Jessica Drolet, 25, of Ottawa, and Eden Koazoleas, 19, of Alberta, were also arrested, along with David Nikolaus Aleksandr Ballovarre, 22, of Oslo, Norway, and Paul Martin Brasch, 32, of New Zealand.



Police originally arrested a further 77 partygoers in the crackdown but they were released with a warning.

Cambodia authorities have clamped down on visitors posting revealing images of themselves at temple sites in recent years.