Top brass tackle Malaysia probe
ONE of Hong Kong's top soldiers involved in organising the draw-down of the British Garrison is leading the inquiry into the Mount Kinabalu training expedition, the South China Morning Post can reveal.
Colonel Mike Winarick flew into Kai Tak airport yesterday with Major Jim Noble, which the Post can also name as one of the inquiry team and the man in charge of approving locally-based adventure training expeditions.
The pair, whose identities have been kept a strict secret by the Ministry of Defence, are part of a four-man inquiry team. The two others, a British-based lieutenant-colonel and a captain, were also due to fly into Hong Kong yesterday, but last-minute alterations delayed their arrival.
Colonel Winarick and Major Noble flew back to Hong Kong from Kota Kinabalu in East Malaysia where they had spent about a week gathering information for the inquiry.
Colonel Winarick said they had been to the area to speak to key members in the search for the missing men.
He said they would stay in Hong Kong for as long as it took to gather any other information they deemed necessary.
The inquiry was ordered after an adventure training expedition to the dangerous Low's Gully resulted in five of the 10-man team nearly starving to death.
Three of the soldiers were local Chinese members of the Hong Kong Military Service Corps, Lance-Corporal Kevin Cheung Yiu-keung, and privates Victor Lam Wai-ki and Chow Wai-keung.
Together with expedition leader Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Neill and Major Ronald Foster, the five spent three weeks stranded in the gully, a 1,800-metre-deep ravine at the top of Mount Kinabalu.
They were only found after an extensive search by both Malaysian and British military and mountain rescue teams after the alarm was raised by their colleagues who made it to safety.
When they were plucked from the gully more than a month after they first began its descent, they were close to starvation.
An inquiry was launched and conducted in York, England, to address what went wrong with the expedition.
Its final report is not expected to be ready for a number of months.
The report is not expected to include recommendations, but may lead to a review of expedition selection and procedure. The army may take further action if it considers disciplinary measures is appropriate.
