Three police officers who allegedly used handguns to threaten female employees at a Phnom Penh massage parlor Tuesday morning will be punished internally by police, municipal police chief Touch Naruth said yesterday.
Mr Naruth, whose son’s name was allegedly used by one of the men during the incident, said the three officers would be punished by their superiors at their respective stations.
“We have handed them over to their workplaces for punishment by their own police administration, after they denied using my son’s name to threaten staff at the massage parlor,” Mr Naruth said yesterday, adding that an investigation into the incident would continue when the owner of the massage parlor returned from a trip to Vietnam.
“The [massage parlor] owner complained that they used my son’s name to threaten staff, but in fact they used their handguns to threaten the staff,” he said. “They will be punished by disciplinary police rules.”
On Tuesday, Phnom Penh minor crimes deputy police chief Teng Chansar said the apparently intoxicated trio arrived at La Cigale Bleue massage parlor at about 2 am, pointed their service weapons at the employees and demanded they do whatever they were ordered to do. He said one of the men also claimed to be Mr Naruth’s son, using his nickname “Pich.”
The men were identified by police as Vong Chanra, 46, a bodyguard with the Interior Ministry, Mom Kunthel, 32, a police officer with the Interior Ministry’s penal department, and Hun Maniroth, 30, an immigration police officer for Preah Sihanouk province.
Mr Chansar said the men fired no shots and proceeded to fall asleep inside the parlor, where they were found and arrested at 10 am.
Pen Piseth, immigration police chief at the Interior Ministry, said yesterday that alleged offender Mr Maniroth has been ordered to provide a report about the incident. “If we find he has made a mistake then we will punish him using immigration police regulations,” he said.
