I am a Prisoner in the Bangkok Hilton

(Note: There has been a gap in Gary's blogs to us as we have had difficulty getting letters and parcels to him in Bang Kwang and he getting letters to us unless they went via a 3rd party) Sadly my initial hopes regarding my book have been scuppered. The original intention was to have it published before being repatriated. This didn’t work out and as I have now fully experienced the physical repatriation experience it behoves me to document it. As far as I can tell only 2 other Britons have written accounts of the process from attending the handover ceremony to the Wandsworth Marshals, to being delivered into the FNIC(First Night in Custody) cell on E Wing. Whereas Lester and Scotty, the two who have documented the process, knew their actual date of repatriation for weeks beforehand, my day was mired in confusion, due in part because of the floods affecting Bangkok. Originally I was scheduled for the end of November – later leaked to me by the screws as being 30/11/11. As the Bangko

Since Nov. 2010 I think I have detected the merest zephyr of change that has wafted across the Thai desk at the London Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). Certainly not enough of a breeze to ruffle the feathers of a certain ' Shelia ' in the British Embassy in Bangkok. Nevertheless, when she visited me yesterday (Feb 3 rd 2011) to; amongst others, deliver a bollocking for continuing to exercise my right to blog; a new word has entered her lexicon: Transparency. Seemingly there's a plan afoot that embassy staff have to be a shade clearer in their attempts at cover ups. As laudable as the Foreign Secretary's directive is, by the time it has been “filtered” past the Mandarins such as Haigh – the head of the Thai Desk it has been watered down. Onto Dufall. The distortion has resumed its usual opaqueness in order to protect the guilty. Transparency has arse. How about a little more on the whys and wherefores of Quinten Quayle deserting the stinking shit, oops the s

One has to hand it to the British Embassy’s leading misanthrope Kate “Kuntz” Dufall. She never misses a chance to ream us poor inmates in her charge a new 'Ronson' (rectum). A recent victim of Kuntz is my countryman Neil “Joey” Clayton. Soon after our arrests the Royal (that’s fratricide to us commoners) Thai filth handed over our passports to the Embassy in Bangkok. Currently, by her own admission, Kuntz is holding over 70 passports, each one worth a good $US500 on the illegal passport market. A nice little earner for someone who can trace her Aussie roots back to the Botany Bay; 70 x 500=$35,000. There’s a problem though for her to realise this windfall. Those passports are needed for when we finally repatriate, that is unless she can get us to apply for new ones. Enter Joey. Kuntz has hit upon the scam of telling us, individually that our passports have been mislaid – not lost, mislaid. As if there’s a difference! – consequently we must apply for replacement travel warrants

Call me a cynic if you will. At least it is better than the appellation of Dr. Hannibal (as in Lecter) that Dufall of British Embassy infamy insists on using to discourage potential correspondents and visitors. Furthermore , a cognomen of cynic is accurate whereas Hannibal..... This month’s Citylife (Jan2011) community service section – check it out on the Web – resulted in howls of derisive laughter to emanate from D3 in the Hilton. No fault of editor Pim’s but the entry was deliberately sparse on necessary detail thereby permitting certain – no names, no pack drill – British Embassy employers to instigate yet another dirty deed done dirt cheap and bolster her pension funds at the expense of the pockets of both British ex pats and us residents in Bang Kwang. As of (presumably)1/1/11 all non- Europeans requiring a visa to travel to the UK must pass an exam that tests their fluency with the English language. A favoured phrase of both my prep. School Latin master and my mother comes rea

If there's anything that scares the excreta - that's shit to you and me – out of the Prisoners Abroad (PA) and their boss here at the British Embassy in Bangkok, Kate Duffall ( kate.dufall@fco.gov.uk should you wish to forward this entry on to her) is that we Britons have unimpeded access to the outside world Both PA and the the Embassy go to inordinate lengths to ensure we remain muzzled. Perhaps blog followers maybe interested in the modus operandi (MO) of PA. This will be much expanded on in the PA chapter of my book. Credit though, where credit is due. As with many scams perpetrated on us Brits in Thai Gaols by those allegedly helping us, I first heard of this possibility from a Lat Yao resident, (Alan) John Davies, better known to me as Deep Throat or DT. As soon as I started receiving Nexus, a bi-monthly magazine for the active ex-pat community edited by Sheila Hare in the UK, I realised that this was a terrific source of potential visitors and supporters. I reso

Those who know me well understand my belief that since 2003 and the stewardship of Pauline Crowe, the Charity Prisoners Abroad (motto – Caring for Britons in overseas jails) is nothing more these days than a wholly owned subsidiary of the United Kingdoms Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). Funds are donated for Brits such as Joey, Scotty and I by socially concerned citizens such as Richard Branson and others for the purpose (amongst other things) of motivating Her Majesty's Government (HMG) to protest the appalling and inhumane conditions that its passport holders are incarcerated in. Instead Sir Richard and the others largesse goes towards Prisoners Abroad's (PA) agenda of suppressing the life threatening risk we take in getting the picture of Thai prison life to you. A challenge to Ms. Crowe. Name just one campaign that PA has led to improve our conditions! No surprise then that when my mate (no names, no pack drill) connected me to Joey's Facebook entry I

Now here is a little vignette that I hope explains some aspects of Thai prison life and frankly causes you some righteous indignation. I'm also hoping that someone will alert Professor Duncan McCargo and his Students at Leeds University about this entry. 'Incidents' occur on a daily basis here in the Hilton. All of them are significant, and most are very indicative of how the Thais Department of Corrections (D.O.C) consider the 'status' of the 300,000 - 350,000 inmates they are charged with managing. What is spread publicly is nearly always diametrically opposed from reality. Rarely do you, the outsider, get a chance to hear from us inmates as to what is really going on in the prisons. Even when we do manage to grab your attention, via blogs such as this, its short work for Embassy staff - in the case especially of the British Embassy - to dismiss what we have to say as being the rantings of disgruntled "criminals who can't do the time". As I have said

At some stage during their incarceration all Britons will consider whether to repatriate from Thailand back to the UK. After cursory research the majority reject the facility. Those that feel that possibly they have an advantage by doing so formalise their intentions by requesting that Mrs Dufall of the Embassy initiates the request by contacting the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) – a division of the UK Ministry of Justice overseeing the incarceration of offenders in British Prisons. We British inmates in Thai jails have been told by Mrs Dufall that this is the official process and nearly all accept this verbal statement. However, this is untrue. An applicant, such as myself, is free to submit their intention directly to NOMS and therefore bypass the British Embassy. What is impressed on us is that NOMS can arbitrarily decide, without stating any reason whatsoever, to reject the application. Whilst this contingency is permitted for by the UK/Thai repatri

Due to the troubles in Thailand recently we have not heard much from Gary and so updates have been sparse. However, things are getting back to normal and we have a few blogs to upload as and when we get the chance. In the meantime here is an article by Erika Fry about the routine use of torture by the Royal Thai Police to force people to sign confessions of guilt. http://www.ahrchk.net/ahrc-in-news/mainfile.php/2006ahrcinnews/763/ This is important as the British Government's stance is that they do not help people who have pled guilty in the Thai Courts. This means they will not support any requests for a Kings Pardon by British Nationals and without the UK Governments support these requests fail. By not recognizing that the guilty admissions were obtained by torture and then not supporting their own subjects afterwards due to the admission of guilt the UK Government is effectively condoning the torture of British Nationals. Article written by Jake

Some of you may have noticed that the blog has gone quiet. This is not intentional but is due to a few problems. Some of you may be aware of the political unrest in Thailand. If not, it seems that the Red Shirts, who are supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra the deposed Premier, are trying to force an election to ultimately force the Yellow Shirts out of power. Couple this unrest with the fact that the Thai King has been in hospital after an extended illness and you can see the disruption this may cause. I recommend the Political Prisoners in Thailand website (http://thaipoliticalprisoners.wordpress.com/) for news about what is going on there. Incidentally despite warning UK travellers of the possibility of bomb and grenades in Central Bangkok and of trouble in other outlying areas, the FCO is only advising travellers to exercise extra caution. (http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/travel-advice-by-country/asia-oceania/thailand). I mean we wouldn’t want to harm the tourist trad

It is amazing the number of times that stories of bribery and corruption appear in Thai Newspapers. Currently only those stories that affect the opposition make the Newspapers and it is only thanks to the efforts of other websites (like Political Prisoners in Thailand http://thaipoliticalprisoners.wordpress.com/ ) that any other stories get out. However, a high proportion of these stories involve the Royal Thai Police. Bribery, corruption, protection rackets and even murder are not uncommon to be reported when they are found out. Last year the political events in Thailand overshadowed news that came out in January of 2009 about the Thai Police having to arrest other officers that were working as a kidnap gang. It is was reported that these Border patrolmen abused their positions to extract Bt8.7 Million and many people had been wrongly imprisoned (and are still being held) as a direct result of extortion and kidnapping by the Border patrol group called Patrol 41. The case of Toby Chaur

The literary magazine ‘Granta’ published a series of essays, probably in 1998, by noted media commentators expressing their immediate reactions upon hearing the news of Princess Diana’s death in a car crash. As I recall, many of the articles were suspicious of the British Queen’s possible involvement in the accident. The writers expressed that their initial reactions ranged from “a fortuitous event for the monarch” to; to my own personal favourite; “did the Queen fix her brakes?” In the UK and many other countries, we have the freedom to criticise our leaders. For the most part, those occupying privileged positions are not protected from public censure, freedom of thought and the ability to voice those thoughts is considered to be an essential human right. Not so in Thailand. Sixty three years after the murder of his brother, Rama VIII behind closed doors in the palace where the only other occupant of the room was the present incumbent, any free discussion, albeit in private, as to the

There may have been some confusion over my last entry on the blog on the subject of Death Row. This is my fault for not being more specific, sorry. The 24 names given were for those on D2 Death Row who had been excluded, although eligible, from the Kings Birthday amnesty on December 5th 2007. It is by order of the incumbent that : “ drug cases, whether the sentence is death, life or numbered must be excluded from the first amnesty which by virtue of having exhausted all appeals in the courts they would have otherwise received ” Having exhausted 3 courts, the only possible means for someone who is on a Death sentence to get a commutation to life, is by an appeal to the King. However, only in exceptionally rare cases will the Monarch rule on this before he receives notification that the victim is scheduled for imminent execution. The appeal process frequently takes many years and the victim is only ever informed of the Kings decision to decline a reduction in sentence about 2-3 hours bef

Most readers of this blog probably have never heard of the name of the one-time major pharmaceutical company named Distillers. We aren’t on-line here in the Hilton so I don’t know if one of the 20th Century’s biggest medical disaster perpetrators – Distillers, manufacturers of Thalidomide – are still in business. The names Distillers and Thalidomide cause members of the 50s and 60s generation to shudder in horror. On a side issue, that the Directors of Distillers weren’t publically lynched, a-la Saddam Hussain, is a good reason I embraced Atheism during my formative years. Despite my Atheistic beliefs, I still have belief in an overall “Goodness” encapsulated within the human psyche. Perhaps, just perhaps Distillers and its board of Directors festered and withered away in well deserved putrefaction. Please let me know if Google returns a current balance sheet on them or not. As said though, my overall faith in human nature – outside of Thailand naturally – is strong, so I will gamble f

It has recently been reported that Thailand has restarted executions of Death Row prisoners. The two that were executed were friends of mine that lived with me here in the same building. The two men Bundit Charoenwanich, 45, and Jirawat Phumpruek, 52, were taken in the night and only given 60 minutes to write their last wills and have a one minute phone call to their families before being executed by lethal injection. This was the first executions carried out by Thailand since 2003. As prisoners, some of us were aware that the lethal injections had been delivered to Bang Kwang prison, but it seems that the decision to execute both men from D2 building was the sole decision of Natee Jitsawang, the Director-General of the Department of Corrections. It was not, so it seems, the decision of the Thai Government, a fact also reported by the BBC World Service. Now that the prisoners have been shown that executions can happen at any time “Life Insurance” is now being paid to the Building Chie

Back in July of this year I reported on the riots and deaths that had occurred in Bombat prison in April 2009. This riot has never been reportd in the outside world and the Department of Correction would like it kep this way. The following is an eye witness account of what happened in Bombat Central Prison. "A Thai Prisoner, un-convicted, jumped one metal fence, climbed on top of a guard station, threw blankets on the concertina wired wall separating building 8 + 9 and was making his way towards the prison wall and the exterior when spotted. A warning shot was fired. Before he could reach the edge or contact the last wall or obstruction, a shot was fired from the guard tower behind building 9 and the inmate fell forward, most probably dead from the head wound. His body remained entangled on the wall between buildings 8 + 9. A group of prisoners had gathered and began shouting to get assistance and some Thai inmates started to confront the acting building chief who in fear ran into

Many British Nationals are raped and murdered in Thailand. Many more are held in jails throughout the country. The following numbers are for the westerners (male and female) in Thai jails as of 20-5-07. As of that date, most of the figures were sent to me by respective Embassies in answer to a questionnaire I had previously sent. The questionnaire was a repeat of an exercise of a similar request to the embassies – also responded to - in the previous year (2006). Both the 2006 and 2007 questionnaires were emphatic that the Consuls include both their own full passport holders as well as those individuals that they were required to represent holding subordinate passports such as the UK’s BNO’s. Austria 1 Canada 3 Czechoslovakia 2 Estonia 1 France 15 Germany 10 Holland 10 Italy 5 Kazakhstan 4 New Zealand 1 Poland 3 Russia 8 Sweden 1 Switzerland 3 Spain 3 USA 1 Uzbekistan 3 UK 173 The UK’s number was sourced from interviews given to Colin Ha

This is a copy of an email that has been sent to the charity Prisoners Abroad. When we get a reply I will post it as well. To: Matthew Pinches (matthew@prisonersabroad.org.uk) Hello Matthew, I hope this email finds you well and not suffering from the effects of what I am about to ask you As you know from past emails I have sent, we are in contact with many British Passport Holders in Bang Kwang Central Prison Thailand. News has started to reach us of an outbreak of H1N1 (swine flu) inside the prison and it there has been some fatalities. As of the 13th July, 2 prisoners have died as a direct result of the virus, one prison guard has also died and a second is in hospital in a very serious condition (hopefully by now having made a full recovery) Reports have also been forwarded to me that the Thai Department of Corrections has issued instructions that face masks are to be worn by all staff and prisoners (non Thai prisoners have to pay 100Baht, approx £2 for these masks) However, can you

Following on from my posting earlier questions have been asked of Prisoners Abroad and the British Embassy here in Thailand. They confirmed in writing that the riots had occurred and that the only British Passport holder involved had been found and visited and deemed safe. He is currently here in Bang Kwang in building D5. One sad fact to report is that an Italian national died in Bombat. The gentlemans name was Gianni and he died of a heart attack after a round of "Intensive Interrogation" Our thoughts go out to his family. We hope the Italian Government has been made aware. News has now reached us all about further riots in Lat Yao again this time in May. We have no news on who, what, why nor how but I will update as soon as I get any news. Be Well All

I have asked others to scour the Internet and in particular the Bangkok Post and Nation websites for news of something very serious that has happened here, but it seems the Thai equivalent of a “D” notice has been issued and so news of the following has been suppressed On the 13th April 2009 there was a riot in the D8 Building in Bombat Prison and a few days after another occurred in Lad Yao. As far as we can ascertain it was sparked by the terrible way that the Thai Prisons are run Here are the bankable facts on what happened at Bombat. On either the 12th or 13th of April, an initially peaceful protest over screws beating and torturing inmates, escalated into the building called D8, breaking out into a riot. The cell block in D8 was subsequently set on fire. Over 100 inmates were involved and were transferred over a 2 day period to the Bangkok Hilton. The first day’s consignment saw 35 victims sent to the punishment block D10 and 40-50 were sent to the other death row, D5. During the