By KENT ATKINSON
NZPA (New Zealand)
Champion rower Rob Hamill says he does not know whether special court hearings next year for Khmer Rouge leaders will bring any sense of closure for the torture and murder of his brother in Cambodia 28 years ago.
"Define closure. . . " he said.
"It (the murder) is something that can never be closed.
"The loss is still there and the family. . . it's hard not to think how life would be if things were different," Hamill, whose mother died three years ago, said.
His father still lives in Whakatane, and he has a surviving brother and sister.
He said if justice could be served by Cambodian Khmer Rouge leaders being brought before a court and made to account for their crimes "then that would be fantastic."
"It seems there are Khmer Rouge still in the political system in Cambodia," Hamill said.
He had been attempting to contact former New Zealand Governor General Dame Silvia Cartwright, one of 13 international judges among 30 s itting on the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).
Hearings are expected to start by June next year, even though the judges have not yet been agreed all the rules for proceedings.
The tribunal was created by a 2003 agreement between Cambodia and the United Nations to seek justice for crimes committed when the Khmer Rouge held power.
Prosecutors are expected to indict about 10 defendants, including the few surviving top Khmer Rouge leaders and Kaing Khek Eav – known by his revolutionary name Comrade Duch – who ran the prison where Westerners were tortured before they were executed.
Records at the prison show Kerry George Hamill, was forced to write a 4000-word "confession" that claimed his father was a colonel in America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who had recruited him into the agency.
Under torture, he described in considerable detail CIA plans to subvert the Khmer Rouge regime, then he and Briton John Dewhirst were killed.
Their colleague, Stuart Glass, a Canadian, was earlier shot off the Cambodian coast when Hamill's yacht was seized in August 1978.
At least 10 other westerners – most of them yachtsmen – were tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng prison at Phnom Penh on suspicion of being CIA spies.
A tribunal spokeswoman Helen Jarvis told The Australian newspaper: "It (the deaths of the yachtsmen) is certainly within the jurisdiction of the court".
"I think it should come up, especially if they're (the tribunal) focusing on Tuol Sleng itself as one situation where a number of crimes have been committed, and I think that's highly likely," she said.
Tuol Sleng is now a museum of genocide marking the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people who died during the Khmer Rouge's five-year rule of Cambodia.
During a 1999 interview with US journalist Nate Thayer, of the Far Eastern Economic Review, Comrade Duch said his victims were tortured and told they would be released if they talked.
He extracted confessions of espionage and insurrection, but said he was ordered him to kill the foreigners and "burn their bodies with tyres to leave no bones."
Tuol Sleng was a former school building divided into tiny brick cells where prisoners were held in solitary confinement. About 14,000 people died there.
Each of the Westerners was accused of spying against Cambodia and was forced to make a detailed confession of CIA involvement and training. Copies of their confessions, were later found in the prison records.
"Define closure. . . " he said.
"It (the murder) is something that can never be closed.
"The loss is still there and the family. . . it's hard not to think how life would be if things were different," Hamill, whose mother died three years ago, said.
His father still lives in Whakatane, and he has a surviving brother and sister.
He said if justice could be served by Cambodian Khmer Rouge leaders being brought before a court and made to account for their crimes "then that would be fantastic."
"It seems there are Khmer Rouge still in the political system in Cambodia," Hamill said.
He had been attempting to contact former New Zealand Governor General Dame Silvia Cartwright, one of 13 international judges among 30 s itting on the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).
Hearings are expected to start by June next year, even though the judges have not yet been agreed all the rules for proceedings.
The tribunal was created by a 2003 agreement between Cambodia and the United Nations to seek justice for crimes committed when the Khmer Rouge held power.
Prosecutors are expected to indict about 10 defendants, including the few surviving top Khmer Rouge leaders and Kaing Khek Eav – known by his revolutionary name Comrade Duch – who ran the prison where Westerners were tortured before they were executed.
Records at the prison show Kerry George Hamill, was forced to write a 4000-word "confession" that claimed his father was a colonel in America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who had recruited him into the agency.
Under torture, he described in considerable detail CIA plans to subvert the Khmer Rouge regime, then he and Briton John Dewhirst were killed.
Their colleague, Stuart Glass, a Canadian, was earlier shot off the Cambodian coast when Hamill's yacht was seized in August 1978.
At least 10 other westerners – most of them yachtsmen – were tortured and killed at Tuol Sleng prison at Phnom Penh on suspicion of being CIA spies.
A tribunal spokeswoman Helen Jarvis told The Australian newspaper: "It (the deaths of the yachtsmen) is certainly within the jurisdiction of the court".
"I think it should come up, especially if they're (the tribunal) focusing on Tuol Sleng itself as one situation where a number of crimes have been committed, and I think that's highly likely," she said.
Tuol Sleng is now a museum of genocide marking the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people who died during the Khmer Rouge's five-year rule of Cambodia.
During a 1999 interview with US journalist Nate Thayer, of the Far Eastern Economic Review, Comrade Duch said his victims were tortured and told they would be released if they talked.
He extracted confessions of espionage and insurrection, but said he was ordered him to kill the foreigners and "burn their bodies with tyres to leave no bones."
Tuol Sleng was a former school building divided into tiny brick cells where prisoners were held in solitary confinement. About 14,000 people died there.
Each of the Westerners was accused of spying against Cambodia and was forced to make a detailed confession of CIA involvement and training. Copies of their confessions, were later found in the prison records.
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