ADVENTROUS SPIRIT: Sean Flynn in Vietnam in the late 1960s. (Picture: Tim Page, The Courier-Mail, Queensland, Australia)Phnom Penh - Renowned British war photographer Tim Page on Wednesday condemned the manner in which a British-Australian team dug up bones it claimed are of missing photographer Sean Flynn, who disappeared in Cambodia 40 years ago.
Page, who has spent years searching for Flynn's remains himself, told the German Press Agency dpa that without DNA testing, there could be no certainty that the remains uncovered in central Cambodia were those of his former colleague, friend and the son of Hollywood legend Errol Flynn - something the team that excavated them has claimed.
"And you don't take a bulldozer to a crime scene investigation," Page said of numerous media reports that the team had used a backhoe to turn up the remains.
"There is a very strict procedure to be followed when digging at the site of possible remains, and in this case, that procedure has not been followed," said Page, who is best known for his photographs from the Vietnam War.
Flynn was in Cambodia on assignment for Time magazine covering its civil war when he and fellow American Dana Stone, a photojournalist with CBS News, went missing on April 6, 1970, after they drove out of Phnom Penh on the road to Vietnam.
Flynn was 28 and Stone was 31 when they disappeared, and neither man was heard from again. It is thought the two were kept alive for a year before being killed, either by the Khmer Rouge or by Vietnamese communist forces.
Page said he believed he had found the site last year where Flynn and up to 11 other missing journalists might have been executed in the early 1970s.
"It looks like all the journalists captured in eastern Cambodia were taken to the same area, so we could be looking at one of 12," he said. "But I haven't released anything because I haven't confirmed it. Until it's proven, it could even be [a Cambodian national]."
Dave McMillan, one of the men behind the dig, said he would "not confirm or deny" reports they had used earth-moving equipment during the dig but said the expedition had been sanctioned by Flynn's half-sister.
"We have done a whole different bunch of things - I have been up there three months digging holes," he said. "We used some not-so-obvious techniques you wouldn't see in a forensics handbook."
On Friday, the team handed over the remains to the US embassy in Phnom Penh. An embassy spokesman said the remains would be forwarded to the United States for analysis but said it was unclear how long it would take to confirm or refute the identity.
Flynn and Stone were among at least 37 journalists who died or disappeared while covering the Cambodia conflict, which ended on April 17, 1975, when Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge forces took Phnom Penh and instituted their four-year-long genocidal regime known as Democratic Kampuchea.
The Cambodian government announced in March that it would build a monument to the memory of those journalists. A group of surviving journalists from that era have planned a reunion in Phnom Penh in April, the first since they were expelled by the Khmer Rouge in 1975.
Around 2 million Cambodians are thought to have died during the Khmer Rouge rule of the country. A UN-Cambodian court in Phnom Penh has been established to try some of the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders.
Page, who has spent years searching for Flynn's remains himself, told the German Press Agency dpa that without DNA testing, there could be no certainty that the remains uncovered in central Cambodia were those of his former colleague, friend and the son of Hollywood legend Errol Flynn - something the team that excavated them has claimed.
"And you don't take a bulldozer to a crime scene investigation," Page said of numerous media reports that the team had used a backhoe to turn up the remains.
"There is a very strict procedure to be followed when digging at the site of possible remains, and in this case, that procedure has not been followed," said Page, who is best known for his photographs from the Vietnam War.
Flynn was in Cambodia on assignment for Time magazine covering its civil war when he and fellow American Dana Stone, a photojournalist with CBS News, went missing on April 6, 1970, after they drove out of Phnom Penh on the road to Vietnam.
Flynn was 28 and Stone was 31 when they disappeared, and neither man was heard from again. It is thought the two were kept alive for a year before being killed, either by the Khmer Rouge or by Vietnamese communist forces.
Page said he believed he had found the site last year where Flynn and up to 11 other missing journalists might have been executed in the early 1970s.
"It looks like all the journalists captured in eastern Cambodia were taken to the same area, so we could be looking at one of 12," he said. "But I haven't released anything because I haven't confirmed it. Until it's proven, it could even be [a Cambodian national]."
Dave McMillan, one of the men behind the dig, said he would "not confirm or deny" reports they had used earth-moving equipment during the dig but said the expedition had been sanctioned by Flynn's half-sister.
"We have done a whole different bunch of things - I have been up there three months digging holes," he said. "We used some not-so-obvious techniques you wouldn't see in a forensics handbook."
On Friday, the team handed over the remains to the US embassy in Phnom Penh. An embassy spokesman said the remains would be forwarded to the United States for analysis but said it was unclear how long it would take to confirm or refute the identity.
Flynn and Stone were among at least 37 journalists who died or disappeared while covering the Cambodia conflict, which ended on April 17, 1975, when Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge forces took Phnom Penh and instituted their four-year-long genocidal regime known as Democratic Kampuchea.
The Cambodian government announced in March that it would build a monument to the memory of those journalists. A group of surviving journalists from that era have planned a reunion in Phnom Penh in April, the first since they were expelled by the Khmer Rouge in 1975.
Around 2 million Cambodians are thought to have died during the Khmer Rouge rule of the country. A UN-Cambodian court in Phnom Penh has been established to try some of the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders.
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