US Man Tells Of Assault by HM’s Bodyguards in California

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ot mien kampf
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US Man Tells Of Assault by HM’s Bodyguards in California

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https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/us-m ... ds-111327/
The American man who claims to have been assaulted in California last weekend by a bodyguard of Prime Minister HE’s son, HM, as he tried to serve a court subpoena said on Thursday he was considering pressing charges.

Paul Hayes says he was dropped on his head outside a restaurant on Saturday while serving Lieutenant General Manet a subpoena relating to a wrongful imprisonment suit brought in a U.S. federal court by opposition official Meach Sovannara.

Paul Hayes lies in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Los Angeles this week.
Paul Hayes lies in the intensive care unit of a hospital in Los Angeles this week.

Speaking by telephone from his hospital bed in Los Angeles on Thursday, Mr. Hayes said he was interviewed by police while waiting to be admitted to an intensive care unit on Saturday with bruising to his spinal cord. He said he had not yet decided whether to file charges with police.

“I would like to reserve comment on that right now. At this point, I just want to make sure that I do not jeopardize my health. I am looking at what legal remedies are available to me,” said Mr. Hayes, who is a private investigator hired by Mr. Sovannara’s lawyers.

Mr. Hayes said that he arrived at about 5 p.m. on Saturday at the La Lune restaurant in Long Beach, California, where Lt. Gen. Manet was set to dine with supporters, and found two parking spots cordoned off in front.

“It’s your regular, ordinary strip mall. It was a very surprising place for a Cambodian general to be having a banquet,” Mr. Hayes recalled. “It’s a hole in the wall and it’s on the end of the road, near a laundromat. I was told the banquet would start at 6 p.m, so I parked my car in the next spot over, and thought, ‘Hey, I’m in.’”

After waiting in the area for a while, he said, “I identified myself to some police officers and said: ‘As soon as General Manet arrives, I will approach him with this, and I don’t want you to think I’m attacking him,’” he said.

“One officer, who was Cambodian by the way, took my ID and went to show it to his boss and said it was all OK. But it did not go to plan. As soon as Manet gets within five to 10 feet of me, I squeezed past the men in suits [his guards] and I yelled out to the general.”

“Now, witnesses will know better than I do, because it came from behind me, but someone picked me up, lifted me, and threw me backwards, knowing fully well that we were on asphalt. I landed on my head.”

Mr. Hayes said that the next thing he knew, he was waking up on his back in the parking lot in pain.

“My instinct is to get up. I cannot. So I try to move my arms. And this was one of the scariest feelings I ever had: I was using all my power but I simply could not move my arms, and I could not move my legs. This lasted for 30 seconds,” Mr. Hayes said.

“After about 30 seconds, I’m able to roll my body to the right, but I have no control of my arms, they’re just flopping around,” he said. A paramedic then took him to a nearby hospital, where police also interviewed him.

“We did CAT scans, chest X-rays, and the doctor says, ‘I’m checking you into the ICU and you’re going to be there for three to five days because this is more serious than you think. You have a bruise on your spinal cord and this could lead to paralysis,’” he said.

“The doctor says that the best-case scenario is that the pain will be with you forever. That scared me, because the pain in the moments after felt like electric shocks going from across my chest to my neck.”

“I get steroids every six hours to try to reduce the swelling on my spinal cord. I’m up walking now, but I may have to get cervical surgery in my neck.”

Keith Rohman, the director of the Los Angeles-based Public Interest Investigations firm, for which Mr. Hayes works, said in an email that he was appalled by what happened in Long Beach and said that he believed Mr. Hayes would press charges once he was out of the hospital.

“This is an outrage. Paul Hayes is an American citizen who is properly licensed to serve court documents. In the course of attempting to legally deliver these court documents he was brutally attacked, presumably by individuals working for HM,” Mr. Rohman said.

“We are calling on the Long Beach Police Department to conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of this matter,” he added.

The Long Beach police have not responded to multiple requests for comment. In Phnom Penh, the head of the Interior Ministry’s bodyguard department, Touch Naruth, who oversees the assigning of bodyguards, declined to comment due to the Khmer New Year holiday.

However, Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan said he believed Mr. Hayes fabricated his story.

“What I have learned from the people there is that this man tried to attack HM, then a bodyguard sprayed him with pepper spray, and then this man accused him of hitting him,” Mr. Siphan said.

“The bodyguard was protecting HM proportionally. They just pepper-sprayed him.”

Asked why he believed Mr. Hayes had been sent to an intensive care unit and placed in a neck brace if he had not been assaulted, Mr. Siphan said he did not know.

“Maybe he fell down,” the spokesman added.

Lt. Gen. Manet did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday. Mr. Hayes had been trying to serve him a subpoena for a lawsuit brought in a U.S. federal court by Mr. Sovannara, an opposition official who is serving 20 years at Phnom Penh’s Prey Sar prison.

Mr. Sovannara, whose family lives in Long Beach, was last year found guilty of “leading an insurrection” for his presence at a 2014 protest that turned violent. He is suing Lt. Gen. Manet and the Cambodian government itself for damages over wrongful imprisonment.

The CNRP official’s U.S. attorney, Morton Sklar, who has long worked on legal cases for the opposition, said the alleged assault of Mr. Hayes while he was trying to serve legal documents was symbolic.

“What happened to Paul Hayes, the process server, is typical of what the HE government does,” Mr. Sklar said. “It uses violence and intimidation to suppress basic rights. But it’s amazing this happened in the U.S. It may be common in Cambodia, but this never happens in the U.S.”
Looks like the big boys here may have the biggest boys in the world after them soon...
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Re: US Man Tells Of Assault by HM’s Bodyguards in California

Post by bolueeleh »

international country politics will out weigh personal vendetta against an "elected" prime minister, not gonna happen
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Re: US Man Tells Of Assault by HM’s Bodyguards in California

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bolueeleh wrote:international country politics will out weigh personal vendetta against an "elected" prime minister, not gonna happen
You are probably right Mr NoHoney NoMoney, but HE hired the best defense team in the US when he discovered that he may not have diplomatic immunity after all. (I can just imagine his face when he found out) Now, we have his son in a similar position.

We don't know how the immunity would play out, as the prosecution lawyers were in the stages of working that out in court when Sam the man Rainsy did an out of court settlement.

I expect that the anti-CPP Cambodian expats all round the world are going to try and make the most of this as it seems a real chance to embarrass HE if nothing else. And I expect Rainsy will be the one to calm it down for nice bit of HE's cash in his account again.

I love the outraged tone of the CPP spokesman. Just like all bullies when someone bigger comes along they start lying and crying for mummy.
Eg It was the police that fired tear gas at the bodyguards of HM, and more than likely made the prime minister's son shed a tear for Cambodian' injustices even if only for 5-10 minutes. And not pepper spray from his bodyguards. Also that comment about "perhaps he justs fell over" These guys squirm like LTO when cornered and they also come out with as much bullshit to try and save face.

If there were any justice in the world the whole of the CPP would be banged up on some totally false, constitutionally illegal charge and all get 20 years or more for it.

Squirm little CPP piggy, squirm.
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Re: US Man Tells Of Assault by HM’s Bodyguards in California

Post by John Bingham »

bolueeleh wrote:international country politics will out weigh personal vendetta against an "elected" prime minister, not gonna happen
Of course they will.
What exactly was this lawyer subpoenaing HM for anyway? Probably for giving away Kampuchea Krom or some other such nonsense.
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Re: US Man Tells Of Assault by HM’s Bodyguards in California

Post by juansweetpotato »

John Bingham wrote:
bolueeleh wrote:international country politics will out weigh personal vendetta against an "elected" prime minister, not gonna happen
Of course they will.
What exactly was this lawyer subpoenaing HM for anyway? Probably for giving away Kampuchea Krom or some other such nonsense.
You know that's not the case. It was over the Freedom Park incident and the subsequent arrest and 20 year sentence of one it's demonstrators.
How many more are still inside?

We all know it was the CPP, who were seen getting out of a van with batons, that were the perpetrators of violence at that demonstration.
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Re: US Man Tells Of Assault by HM’s Bodyguards in California

Post by Username Taken »

John Bingham wrote:
bolueeleh wrote:international country politics will out weigh personal vendetta against an "elected" prime minister, not gonna happen
Of course they will.
What exactly was this lawyer subpoenaing HM for anyway? Probably for giving away Kampuchea Krom or some other such nonsense.
From the news c & p above:

"a subpoena relating to a wrongful imprisonment suit brought in a U.S. federal court by opposition official Meach Sovannara."

Sounds like serious stuff. The US would never stand for this sort of thing.
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Re: US Man Tells Of Assault by HM’s Bodyguards in California

Post by juansweetpotato »

Username Taken wrote:
John Bingham wrote:
bolueeleh wrote:international country politics will out weigh personal vendetta against an "elected" prime minister, not gonna happen
Of course they will.
What exactly was this lawyer subpoenaing HM for anyway? Probably for giving away Kampuchea Krom or some other such nonsense.
From the news c & p above:

"a subpoena relating to a wrongful imprisonment suit brought in a U.S. federal court by opposition official Meach Sovannara."

Sounds like serious stuff. The US would never stand for this sort of thing.
According the Noam Chomsky's Rogue States the US has had more UN sanctions against it than any other country. Of course they ignored all of them.

The difference in this case is that the prisoner is a US citizen.
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Re: US Man Tells Of Assault by HM’s Bodyguards in California

Post by John Bingham »

Yeah, Noam Chomsky is really crucial to this whole discussion here. Nobody was assaulted by anyone anyway, you can easily see from the video that that attorney was just a meth-addled bum trying to figure out the best way to sue the authorities for his self-inflicted injuries.
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Re: US Man Tells Of Assault by HM’s Bodyguards in California

Post by juansweetpotato »

John Bingham wrote:Yeah, Noam Chomsky is really crucial to this whole discussion here. Nobody was assaulted by anyone anyway, you can easily see from the video that that attorney was just a meth-addled bum trying to figure out the best way to sue the authorities for his self-inflicted injuries.
That's not what I got from the videeo. The guy had a nasty gash on his head and was visibly shaken. I thought much the same as you until I watched it. He is diagnosed with a bruised spine and doctors say he will be in pain for the rest of his life, whatever that is supposed to mean. It's hard to know when it all goes legal. Eye witnesses say he was picked up and dropped on his head. That can't be too healthy. :dm:

Point is HM has been served :thumb:
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Re: US Man Tells Of Assault by HM’s Bodyguards in California

Post by Anchor Moy »

Is this the same assault as this ?
https://cambodiaexpatsonline.com/newswor ... t8478.html
The lawyer spearheading a case to have Prime Minister HE’s eldest son, HM, and the Cambodian government tried in the U.S. for wrongful imprisonment said on Tuesday that a subpoena had been officially served,..

“The provision says that where a foreign government has committed a tort in a foreign country that has impacts in the U.S. that act constitutes an exception to the principle of foreign sovereign immunities and allows the government to be sued,” he said...
In what capacity is HM being held responsible for the acts of the Cambodian government ? And why wasn't the PM, as actual head of the government, subpoenaed when he was in the US two months ago ?
... “HM also does not have anything to do with Meach Sovannara, and they have just invented this issue because he is over there. Secondly, I do not believe that the U.S. will let anything happen to foreign high-ranking officials like HM.”

Lt. Gen. Manet has indeed never before been accused of involvement in Mr. Sovannara’s jailing
, and Mr. Sklar’s case offers no evidence other than what it describes as his plum position—due to his connection to his father—amid corruption in the security forces...
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/hun- ... it-108438/

Seems that the whole point of getting the guy to deliver the subpoena to HM at a public dinner was to get his face busted in front of media.Much as I hate to agree a Cambodian govt spokesman, this is really only more tit for tat between the CPP and the CNRP. I understand that the CNRP options are limited, but the whole stunt was just good for embarrassing the Cambodian govt in front of the US Khmers. whoopee.
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