Current Trial Cambodia finds Australian filmmaker James Ricketson guilty of espionage

[Kurve]

Local pro-government media had labelled the filmmaker as a spy acting to promote revolution, but Mr Ricketson expressed only disbelief at the charge.

"Which country was I conducting espionage for?" he said in court after the verdict was announced, Reuters news agency reports.

"The Phnom Penh Municipal Court has decided to convict James Ricketson and sentences him to six years in prison for espionage and collecting information that is harmful to the nation between December 2010 and June 2017," Judge Seng Leang said.

During trial, the prosecution argued that Ricketson's work had damaged Cambodia's reputation on the world stage.

James Ricketson, 69, was arrested in June 2017 while flying a camera drone over an opposition rally.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-45364695?ocid=socialflow_twitter

At his age in prison in Cambodia, one of the poorest nations in the world he might not make it out alive.

 

[Herne Hill Hammer]

He may be a filmmaker and humanitarian but when you're a guest in another country and you don't like their government then you would think his best course of action would have been to leave the country and then lob the hand grenades.

Remember the Care Australian worker Steven Pratt, jailed in Yugoslavia in 1999 for being a spy.

 

[GreyCrow]

Ricketson Pardoned

Australian filmmaker James Ricketson is expected to return to Sydney today after being pardoned on an espionage conviction, but his lawyer says "he will be back in Cambodia".