While the prisoners were told they could be imprisoned for up to a year for what officials had described as “pornographic dancing,” and detained for a six-month period waiting for the case to go to trial, the Cambodian police released pictures showing clothed tourists in sexually suggestive positions. Cambodian prosecutors have charged them with producing pornographic pictures.
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One of the group members spoke to the Press Association under condition of anonymity, saying no one among them understood what was going on, with one of the men even vomiting in shock.
"Honestly, it was really confusing. Everyone was confused. They raided, rounded us up — there was about 80 to 100 people at this party, some of them were tourists. There were about 30 of them [police officers]," adding that none of the arrested were in the pictures.
The group arrested confirmed their identities, they include five British men; Vincent Harley Robert Hook, 35, Daniel Richard Leeming Jones, 30, Thomas Alexander Jeffries, 22, Billy Stevens, 21, and Paul Francis Harris, 32.
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Job Robertus van der Wel, from The Netherlands, 22, Canadians Jessica Drolet, of Ottawa, 25, and Eden Koazoleas, 19, of Alberta, were also arrested, along with David Nikolaus Aleksandr Ballovarre, of Oslo, Norway, 22, and Paul Martin Brasch, 32, of New Zealand. The travelers have been assigned a lawyer, and claim that they are being treated well.
The families of the detainees are said to be “worried sick.”
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"Our parents are doing what they can. It's really just trying to keep a good vibe until we know the outcome," one of the prisoners said, adding that they believed that the investigation targeted foreign expats in Cambodia over foreign tourists and expats wearing bikinis in public and taking part in pub crawls in Siem Reap.
"We're innocent," they said. "We don't know why we've been arrested — we're getting different stories from different people."
An official Cambodian Police statement was published online on Saturday publicizing the arrests and referencing pornography and dancing, it announced that the 10 suspects had been charged following an investigation by the Office Combating Human Trafficking and Protection of Juveniles.
