Northern Irish man dead in south-east Asia

Details are difficult to ascertain, because at time of writing the only official source offering any information about the death was the Cambodian national police.

Their website is entirely in the Khmer language.

However, using Google Translate, the police’s webpage – which is dated Saturday, July 2 – gives the name of the dead man as Martin Stephen Hale.

He was aged 34, and was born in Lisburn.

Closer inspection of the blurry passport picture which the police have released also appears to show that July 2 was his birthday.

The webpage states that two “victims” had been found lying in a room in Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district.

It gives the other man’s name as being Dean William McWilliams, aged 20 (although his similarly-blurry passport image appears to show he is 21).

The webpage seems to say Mr McWilliams was being treated in hospital, and that he is a cousin of Mr Hale.

However a Facebook page called Missing People Northern Ireland, which had carried an appeal for his whereabouts on Sunday, stated on Monday: “Dean McWilliams has been found safe and well.”

As to Mr Hale’s cause of death, different translations of the webpage produced different results – both of them highly unclear.

One said: “Assume that the victim who died was caused by attacks by using items addiction Mall ft.”

Another said: “Assume that the victim who died was caused by a heart attack due to the use of doping Mall Dolphin.”