kandal province – Briton John Keeler—the first Westerner convicted of a sex crime to serve a full sentence in Cambodia—will be handed over to British diplomats upon his release from Kandal provincial prison Tuesday and deported, Kandal’s provincial court prosecutor said Wednesday.
Prosecutor Chheng Phat, who will oversee the handover, said that after sitting in prison from Aug 26, 2000, until Aug 26, 2003, and paying in total compensation 1.5 million riel (about $375) to his four victims, Keeler will be shown the door—as the court ordered.
Sitting bare-chested and tan in the sunny yard of Kandal prison Wednesday afternoon, Keeler declined to discuss plans for his future.
“You can’t crucify me twice,” he told a reporter. “You’ll do your story anyway, but you won’t get any help from me.”
“He is grumpy when the press comes,” said Moung Sam Ath, the Kandal prison police chief.
But generally, Keeler is a pleasant enough inmate, the overseer added.
Moung Sam Ath said that after a two-day hunger strike early on in his stay, Keeler learned to eat Khmer food. The Briton only occasionally bribed guards to fetch him European food, he said.
Keeler, 58, spends a lot of time exercising and teaching the prison guards English, as he appeared to be doing Wednesday afternoon, Moung Sam Ath said.
But, he added, Keeler never joins the Cambodian prisoners toiling in the prison garden, which provides much of the inmates sustenance.
The British Embassy’s deputy head of mission, John Mitchell, said Wednesday that whether Keeler stays in Cambodia is up to Cambodia. He declined to comment further, citing British confidentiality laws.
Meach Sophana, chief of staff at the Ministry of the Interior, said Wednesday that although he had not been following the case closely because of government limbo, he had heard of Keeler’s imminent deportation. One-way tickets out of the country are customary following a foreigner’s release from prison, he said.
“Usually our immigration department arranges for them to leave the country,” Meach Sophana said.
Keeler, formerly the headmaster of the London School of English, was arrested in August 2000 after being seen videotaping four girls, aged 8 and 10, posing indecently in a Takhmau town park.
Those girls later testified that Keeler had befriended them with candy and money.
Shortly afterward, pornography and literature downloaded from a pedophile Web site were discovered on a computer police had confiscated from Keeler.
Contrite in the court room, Keeler apologized to his victims and their families. But following his conviction for debauchery under Cambodia’s law on human trafficking and prostitution, a temper tantrum erupted.
Keeler cursed his lawyer, to whom he told onlookers he had paid a $5,400 bribe to be relayed to the judge, and threw tables, smashed a fan and kicked a motorbike.
