DEATH OF KELLIE WILKINSON M82

27 July 1995

DEATH OF KELLIE WILKINSON : ALLEGATIONS THAT CAMBODIAN POLICE WITHHELD KNOWLEDGE

On 25 July I undertook to investigate media reports that an entry dated 27 May 1994 in the diary of General Tak Vanntha - the Cambodian chief police investigator into the capture of Kellie Wilkinson and her two friends - proved that he knew "definitively" that the hostages had already been killed, and that this information was withheld from the Australian and British Governments.

This investigation has now been concluded, and the available evidence simply does not support the media reports in question.

Tak Vanntha's diary entry dated 27 May noted that two police agents had spent a week in the camp of the Khmer Rouge leader, Bo. The entry, as translated (with names withheld for operational reasons), reads as follows:

[X] and [Y] stayed at Bo's camp from 23/4/94-30/4/94 came back. Bo instructed them to say that the 3 Hs had been killed. People have been told not to ask the questions about the foreigners...Bo does not have control of the H's. Should find insider agents/those who have dealing with them.

It should be noted that the entry does not report that the hostages were dead. It reports only that Bo told the agents to say that they were dead.

This is a classic example of Khmer Rouge disinformation, spread in their own interests - either pecuniary (to generate ransom offers) or to create confusion among investigators. Such disinformation was an unhappy feature of the investigation process throughout.

Subsequent and earlier entries in Tak Vanntha's diary note various other reports both that the hostages had been killed and that they had been sighted. There are, for example, notes dated 3 June, 5 June and 7 June 1994 - all after the entry of 27 May - of reports that they were alive. The first report that the hostages were dead was in fact obtained on 12 May by the Australian-British Police liaison team in Sihanoukville: like so many others it could not be substantiated at the time.

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) have confirmed from their liaison officers in Cambodia at the time that General Tak Vanntha had briefed them on each occasion he received reports of either life or death, and that these briefings coincided with the diary entries. All these reports are on AFP files. AFP officers have expressed confidence in Tak Vanntha and are satisfied that on all occasions he was professional and truthful.

For a journalist to isolate one ambiguous diary entry, and ignore the fact that the diary noted many contradictory reports which were around during the period, is misleading in the extreme.

Conflicting reports throughout the time from the abduction of Kellie Wilkinson and her friends in April to the definitive establishment of their death in July made the period a dreadfully harrowing one for the families involved, who were advised of the reports as they came in.

It was obviously incumbent upon the Cambodian police investigators, and on our supporting police and consular team which was stationed in Sihanoukville, to work on the assumption that the hostages were alive until there was conclusive proof to the contrary. We could not have done otherwise, and the families certainly would not have expected anything less.

It is to be hoped that those determined to keep the spotlight of publicity playing on this unhappy period will consider carefully the impact of their actions on the families in question, and be much more careful in their writing and analysis in the future than was the case here.

CANBERRA