Steve Patterson, Florida Times-Union
Wed, May 4, 2022
Tristan Nettles, pictured in an ID card stamped with the insignia of Ukraine's Ministry of Defense, traveled to Poland to join Ukraine's international legion after Russia invaded in February.
The Ukrainian combat unit that former Beaches resident Tristan Nettles serves in only left Donbas last month so foreigners like him could complete enlisting and get military IDs before returning to fighting.
The 2015 University of North Florida graduate has joined soldiers resisting a Russian invasion and has seen devastation up close.
But when he reaches out to Jacksonville from the relative safety of Kiev, his attention seems far, far away.
“Ashley Oosthuizen is an innocent 23-year-old South African who has been in a Thai prison for almost two years,” Nettles emails a Times-Union reporter. “She was given a death sentence commuted to life in prison. … She desperately needs her story reported.”
Nettles, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, is working from a war zone to raise attention to the cause of a woman facing a frightening future on the other side of the planet.
He’s doing this because, by his account, he played a key part in her suffering.
The one-time St. Johns Town Center restaurant worker created a website this year detailing a secret life as a self-described “international dark web drug dealer” whose shipments to a restaurant he owned on a resort island in Thailand led to police arresting Oosthuizen, his girlfriend and employee, after she signed for a drug-filled package delivered by a postal worker.
After spending money on failed legal defenses, Nettles, 34, and his family in St. Johns County have been working to put a public spotlight on Oosthuizen’s cause.
Tristan Nettles, wearing gear with Ukraine's national symbol on his chest, kneels with other volunteers (faces obscured) during training to fight against Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
He’s hoping that going to war in Ukraine will help bring her story to a larger audience and raise pressure for Thai courts to revisit her case.
“My original plan was to go to D.C. and do a hunger strike there,” Nettles says by email, “but then the war started and the call went out for volunteers.
“… I felt I could kill multiple birds with a single stone and, by fighting for other people's freedom, I felt sure other people would help fight for hers when they found out the monstrous injustice she continues to suffer.”
Tristan Nettles appears to have joined Ukraine's International Legion
More than 3,000 Americans applied to join Ukraine's International Legion soon after Russia invaded in late February, Military Times reported. Nettles appears to have followed that path, traveling to Poland and then crossing Ukraine's border at the end of March. He emailed the Times-Union images an enlistment contract with Ukraine's Ministry of Defense and an ID stamped with the number of the military unit listed in the contract, and his family agrees he left to join the fighting. Ukraine's embassy didn't respond to questions about the enlistment paperwork, but photos published elsewhere of quarters and equipment used by Ukraine's international troops closely match items in photos Nettles has sent.
While he’s overseas, Nettles’ advocacy for Oosthuizen is getting a boost from his mother, who from her home near Fruit Cove has become a cheerleader for the young woman's freedom.
“I can’t help my son. … I can only try to help her,” says Olga Wring, who posts messages online about Oosthuizen to help generate awareness of her plight.
“FREE ASHLEY!!!!!,” Wring wrote in a recent Facebook post followed by hashtags — #freeashleyoosthuizen, #avoiceforashley, #FreeAshley — that have become part of a social media effort shared by people on three continents.
Imprisoned in Thailand on drug charges, South African Ashley Oosthuizen has been a subject of a social media campaign seeking her release.
The last tag, FreeAshley, is also the .org address for the website Nettles built to tell how his drug deals led to Oosthuizen’s imprisonment.
“Thai weed, Canadian chronic, Dutch MDMA crystals & XTC pills, S-Type ketamine, LSD from the UK, 2-CB, Cocaine from Bolivia — Tristan supplied it all,” says the website, which recounts drugs being shipped through the mail to the international school where Nettles started teaching high-school science in 2018 on the island of Koh Samui in the Gulf of Thailand.
Nettles is unapologetic about the deals, stressing that he didn’t sell to students or children.
“I have done nothing evil. I imported party drugs to a party island which consenting adults came to me to purchase, including teachers, villa and business owners, and even a politician,” he says by email.
He says he bought drugs online through the “dark web” and resold them at a markup that made drugs his main income, letting him save to enter medical school and then open an American-cuisine breakfast and lunch restaurant.
By June 2020, Nettles had been accepted to study medicine in Ukraine and left Thailand with a letter from his old employer calling him “a model professional.” But he says he kept ordering drugs online and having them sent to his restaurant on Koh Samui, addressed to a friend who used to own the business and agreed to collect the shipments.
When a postal worker delivered a box of LEGOs to the restaurant in October 2020, Oosthuizen — the restaurant’s manager — signed for them and put them in a storage room. Police who had been tracking the delivery arrived soon after that and found a little over nine ounces of MDMA, a party drug, packed inside the shipment of toys.
Tristan Nettles posted this photo of himself on Facebook.
“Ms. Ashley said that she knew that there were drugs inside but said they belonged to Mr. Tris Seth Nettles, and that he was the person who arranged for the drugs to be sent,” a Thai police investigator wrote in a translated version of an arrest report.
Nettles says he never told Oosthuizen he was shipping drugs to the business and that he has told police she’s innocent. Regardless, she was convicted of importing drugs while Nettles, thousands of miles away, has never been charged.
Lawyers for Oosthuizen have contended that “there is a history of threats, intimidation, rape, and murder of foreign women in this part of Thailand,” saying she was put under excessive duress by being surrounded by 15 plainclothes policemen inside a safe house and “forced and told what to write against her will” without counsel present.
Lawyers have been appealing her life sentence while separately petitioning Thailand’s king, Vajiralongkorn, for a pardon.
Tristan Nettles concerned for health, safety of woman in Thailand prison
Nettles says he’s worried about Oosthuizen’s health and safety, pointing out reports of Thai inmate deaths and news reporting about an inmate raped by a police officer in a jail where his one-time girlfriend was previously held. Oosthuizen has been moved to a prison in mainland Thailand, where he says communication is difficult.
“She really needs some help in these next few months. She’s been all alone for so long,” Nettles says by email. “She is sick and no one has heard from her.”
Oosthuizen’s case has been reported by news outlets in Thailand and Africa, including a South African TV newsmagazine that asked Nettles this year why he didn’t surrender himself to police in hopes of gaining her release.
“I’m not going to turn myself in to the same people that are responsible for keeping her there and for risking her death right now from sickness and ill-health. That’s not how good guys prevail,” Nettles told the program, Carte Blanche. “What I will do is live my life in a way to gain the power, influence and resources to hold those people directly accountable.”
In an email labeled “Fighting for Love in Ukraine,” Nettles says he’s hoping that getting news coverage about him in the United States, and maybe farther afield, will make a difference in what happens to Oosthuizen.
This building at a military facility near Lviv in western Ukraine was gutted by a Russian missile strike.
“I am here to fight for Ashley and to help fight for Ukraine. Ukraine is in a fight for survival, they need competent, trained and experienced soldiers,” he says, describing his unit’s role so far as “building clearing, combat recon and patrols, defensive and offensive operations.”
Nettles says he doesn’t tell other soldiers about his background in Thailand and hopes publicity about Oosthuizen and his past doesn’t get in the way of him serving.
“I work tremendously hard to be a useful asset here. I cause no issues and commit no crimes,” he says. “Perhaps my standing would be affected depending on how the situation was presented, but considering the Ukrainians are in a fight for their very existence, I hope it would not be a deal-breaker. Time will tell.
“As you and others start to report, I am sure it will reach the higher echelons,” he says. “I can only hope they see my willingness to fight and die for love and freedom to be an asset instead of a liability.”
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: In Ukraine war, ex-Duval man spotlights woman’s plight in Thai prison
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