Cambodia Releases Video of French Architect in Bo Scandal [It is a staged interview, the Frenchman looks uneasy and police are everywhere at the airport]

By Jeremy Page

July 20, 2012, 

The Wall Street Journal

 

Cambodian police have taken the unusual step of releasing a video “interview” with a French architect who left for China on Tuesday to cooperate with the investigation into the scandal surrounding Bo Xilai, the ousted Communist Party official.

The video posted on the Cambodian police website late Thursday shows Patrick Henri Devillers telling an unidentified interviewer that he is leaving for China voluntarily. He also thanks Cambodian authorities for releasing him.

Then he is shown going through passport control in the VIP area of the airport in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital.

Agence France Presse, the French news agency, quoted a police spokesman saying the video was released to prove that Mr. Devillers had not been under pressure to leave Cambodia — a major recipient of Chinese aid and investment.

Here’s a rough transcript of the interview in English:

Interviewer: Patrick, I’d like to ask, after your release, where are you thinking of going now?
Devillers: Now I’m leaving for Shanghai this evening, a stop before probably following on to Beijing to answer… to go and cooperate in the case of the investigation into Gu Kailai.
Are you sure? Is it your wish to return to China? Is that true or not?
Yes it’s totally true.
One more time, I’d like to be specific. Is it your wish — there is no pressure — to return to China? And what are your last words for the government of Cambodia?
I reiterate that I’m leaving freely to this destination. For the Cambodian government, I’d like to thank them for my release, and particularly to thank the immigration police… for their care and friendship.
Thank you.

Cambodia, which has an extradition treaty with China, attracted international criticism in 2009 when it deported to China 20 Chinese asylum seekers from the mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority.

Mr. Devillers, who is about 52 and has been living in Cambodia for several years, was detained by police on June 13 in response to an extradition request from China, according to Cambodian officials.

After France urged Cambodia not to act without a sound legal basis, Cambodian authorities said in late June they would not extradite the Frenchman, but were continuing to investigate him.

Cambodian officials then announced on Tuesday that Mr. Devillers had been released without charge — at China’s request — and had flown to China in order to act as a “witness” in the investigation into Mr. Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai.

She is in custody as a murder suspect in the death of Neil Heywood, a British business consultant found dead in his hotel room in the southwestern city of Chongqing in November last year.

Mr. Devillers and Mr. Heywood were both part of a small circle of friends and advisors around Ms. Gu in the northeastern city of Dalian in the 1990s, when Mr. Bo was mayor there, according to several people who knew them all.

Ms. Gu and Mr. Devillers were both consulting partners for Horas Consultancy, a company that advised businesses investing in Dalian and elsewhere in China in the 1990s, according to that firm’s publicity material.

The Frenchman, who was married to a woman from Dalian for several years, also shared a residential address with Ms. Gu in the southern British city of Bournemouth between 2000 and 2003, according to British public records.

– Jeremy Page