National Police Commissioner Hok Lundy has been invited by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to attend a regional counter-terrorism conference in the US state of Nevada, the Interior Ministry said Thursday.
The fourth International Conference on Asian Organized Crime and Terrorism—a weeklong annual convention co-hosted by the FBI and 13 other US law enforcement agencies—is to be held in Las Vegas starting April 1. It will feature workshops on subjects such as Asian criminal enterprises and ethnic Hmong gangs, according to the conference’s Web site.
Hok Lundy could not be contacted Thursday, but Interior Ministry spokesman Lieutenant General Khieu Sopheak said the commissioner had started the application process for a US entry visa and hopes to attend.
In February 2006, John Miller, then-director of the US State Department’s anti-human trafficking office, disclosed that Hok Lundy had been denied a US entry visa in 2005 due to allegations linking him to human trafficking.
Hok Lundy and other Interior Ministry officials have vigorously denied the allegation. “We’ve denied it for a long time. He was never involved,” Khieu Sopheak said Thursday.
US Embassy spokesman Jeff Daigle said that embassy officials are legally prohibited from commenting on visa applications.
In February 2006, US Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli said the embassy had no credible evidence linking Hok Lundy to human trafficking. “The embassy’s position on this matter has not changed,” Daigle wrote in an e-mail Thursday.
In a March 2006 visit to Cambodia, FBI Deputy Director John Pistole asked Hok Lundy to attend the FBI National Academy’s graduation ceremonies in June that year. Cambodian officials said at the time that no official invitation was received, and Hok Lundy did not attend.
(Additional reporting by Pin Sisovann)
