National Police are preparing to ask Interpol to issue a “red notice” for Som Ek, a tacit admission that the convicted terrorist may have fled the country after escaping from a hospital over a week ago.
Mr. Ek, who was serving a 40-year prison sentence over two bombing cases, escaped from Phnom Penh’s Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital on October 8 after relatives subdued his guards by plying them with sleeping pill-laced food, according to authorities.
On Sunday, National Police spokesman Kirth Chantharith said an Interpol red notice for Mr. Ek, alerting other countries that he is wanted in Cambodia, was pending.
“We have already prepared the document…but I don’t know if it has arrived yet” at Interpol, he said.
“Once we have a red notice, Interpol will tell all the countries to arrest him and send him back.”
General Chantharith declined to discuss what else authorities were doing to recapture Mr. Ek, and he did not answer when asked where he might be.
Pork Kolkoma, director of Cambodia’s Interpol office, could not be reached.
