It is almost ten months since Cove ‘s Jamie Taggart, was last seen, in a remote mountainous region of North Vietnam, near Lào Cai on the border with China., there on an independent plant-finding expedition.
The 42 year old horticulturalist and volunteer firefighter, who ran the renowned Linn Botanical Gardens in Cove, on the Rosneath Peninsula, was on his second visit to Vietnam. He had been there on an organised trip in 2011 but this time he was intent o making some exploratory short treks into the hills on his own to see some specific plant life in which he was interested.
He arrived in Hanoi on 28th October, texted that he was there and that he would be taking a train up to Lào Cai – but he also mentioned that he had left his phone charger at home, so no-one was too surprised when there were no more messages from him.
He was dropped off by a motorbike taxi at his boarding house in Sapa on 1st November and nothing has apparently been seen of him since.
When he failed to turn up for the flight he had booked for his return on 29th November – from Hanoi back to Glasgow via Amstedam’s international hub of Schipol, his family assumed he had just missed the flight and would shortly be in touch.
When there was no contact from him the alarm was then raised and efforts to locate him or to discover what has happened to him have been ongoing since early December 2013.
It later emerged that his absence was noted on 2nd November, the day after he had been dropped off at the guest house in Sapa. They reported him missing – which they are required to do. They had found his rucksack and passport in his room. This news did not reach his family for four weeks, after he had failed to take his flight home.
Folk on the peninsula have raised thousands of pounds to pay for searches of the area in which Jamie vanished. First Minister Alex Salmond has been in contact with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the matter.
Patrick Harvie MSP has also written to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, soliciting their energetic assistance in helping to find out what has happened to Jamie Taggart.He has now had a response from the responsible minister.
Obviously, for his family and friends, this is the worst of situations. A very remote place. An unfamiliar language. Few personally known contacts who can be relied upon to act with determination and persistence – and that paucity of influence appears to affect the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as well.
Hugo Swire, Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office [FCO] has given the latest situation update to Patrick Harvie in a letter reproduced below.
It is clear that efforts have been made through the appropriate channels to ask for efforts to be made in rsolving this mystery, at the heart of which is the safety and life of a British citizen.
Mr Swire said there is still no evidence of which direction Jamie had taken while trekking, but that the British embassy would continue to liaise with local authorities and keep him updated.
He said he had also written to his counterpart in the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vice Minister Bui Thanh Son, ‘to urge the Vietnamese government to maintain the profile of Mr Taggart’s disappearance locally and ask that police review their investigation for new leads that might warrant further searches.
‘We now await their response to consider whether there is any further support that we can offer.’
In our reading of the letter from Hugo Swire, what is disappointing is the absence of any proactive effort beyond ticking the usual ‘to do’ boxes to show that you have tried; and, worryingly, the absence of the sort of influence – or perhaps the bringing to bear of such influence, if it exists – that can galvanise a focused, intelligent and systematic persistence in discovering what has happened to Mr Taggart.
In the meantime, Jamie Taggart’s family and friends wait and do what they can.
It is galling to contrast this situation with Jamie Taggart with the media and Foreign Office attention to the wholly-earned plight of a couple of greedy girls from the United Kingdom, one from Scotland and one from Northern Ireland, who were caught acting as drug mules to earn money to sustain a party lifestyle in Ibiza.
They are now to be brought home to serve out their sentence – or what we reduce it to – while not even news of what has happened to Jamie Taggart is being found to be brought home.
The Lochside Press, which serves the Clyde sea lochs area, has consistently – and necessarily – kept the profile of this case high in its online pages and is always worth reading.
Here is a map of the area where Jamie Taggart was last seen is online here.
Here , below, is the letter from Hugo Swire at the FCO to Patrick Harvey MSP:
