Today's arrest of leng Sary for crimes of the Khmer Rouge is notable, since he has been indicted for genocide before - and let off
November 12, 2007
Tom Fawthrop
The Guardian Unlimited (UK)
He had been Pol Pot's foreign minister and deputy prime minister. He was China's most trusted contact among the inner circle of the genocidal regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975-79. But at 5.30am on Monday November 12, international law and justice finally caught up with him at his luxury mansion in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.
Cambodian police, acting on an arrest warrant from the jointly run Cambodian-UN Khmer Rouge tribunal (officially known by the acronym ECCC), arrested the 77-year-old Ieng Sary and his wife Ieng Thirith, the former minister for education in a regime that abolished schooling as well as money.
Asia's first genocide tribunal, that has frequently been bogged down by legal disputes and budgetary problems, is now close to finalising indictments against the five surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime, with four now in custody and one more expected to be arrested in the next few weeks.
According to a July 18 filing by prosecutors to the tribunal's judges, Ieng Sary, "promoted, instigated, facilitated, encouraged and/or condoned the perpetration of the crimes" when the Khmer Rouge held power.
It said there was evidence of Ieng Sary's participation in planning, directing and co-ordinating the Khmer Rouge "policies of forcible transfer, forced labour and unlawful killings".
However, the accused has denied all responsibility for the estimated 1.7 million deaths under the Khmer Rouge and claims that as a foreign minister he was not fully in the loop. In fact documents show that he ranked third in the Khmer Rouge hierarchy from 1975-77, with Nuon Chea, who has already been detained, ranking second.
His arrest is of great importance to the credibility of the Khmer Rouge tribunal. Many Cambodians and feared and international commentators predicted that Ieng Sary would be the one leader who would never be brought to justice, for a variety of reasons.
First, he is the only one who had previously been indicted for genocide, together with Pol Pot, immediately after the Vietnamese army toppled the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979.
leng Sary and Pol Pot were indicted for genocide by the Vietnamese-backed "People's tribunal", tried in absentia and sentenced to death.
The verdicts of the 1979 Phnom Penh tribunal were written off by western governments as "communist propaganda" to provide legitimacy for the newly established anti-Pol Pot government known as the Heng Samrin regime, backed by the former Soviet Union. Pol Pot died in 1998.
In 1996, leng Sary led a breakaway Khmer Rouge faction that greatly contributed to the eventual defeat of the insurgency. The Cambodian government pushed through an amnesty resolution as a reward, backed by parliament. That led to the king signing a pardon that lifted the death sentence and released leng Sary from the verdicts handed down by the 1979 tribunal. In addition, he was gifted with a diplomatic passport, without holding any official position.
In spite of his endorsement of the "killing fields" regime, leng Sary has enjoyed a very long and lavish immunity from prosecution. He enjoyed VIP status as Pol Pot's foreign minister at the UN during the 1980s. Washington's powerful lobby in the UN and arm-twisting of their client states worked a diplomatic miracle by extending UN recognition to a government that no longer existed, after being booted out of power in 1979.
His other great supporter has been China, who provided almost unlimited arms, bullets and tanks to the regime both when it was in power and long afterwards, as the Khmer Rouge continued for another 20 years to try and shoot their way back into power.
Cambodian human rights groups, knowing China feared embarrassing disclosures about their complicity with a murderous regime, feared Beijing would block a trial ever taking place. If the tribunal did go ahead, they were convinced that China would certainly protect leng Sary from prosecution.
During the 1980s, Ieng Sary was the favoured conduit for Chinese funds and he collected at least a million dollars a year from Beijing's embassy in Bangkok from 1979-1990. He also travelled on a Chinese passport.
Prime minister Hun Sen, probably at the behest of China, made several public comments that Ieng Sary should not be prosecuted at a time when aid from Beijing was rapidly increasing in the late 1990s.
Not surprising then, that so many believed that Ieng Sary could never be prosecuted, and it could all be justified with the convenient legal argument that no man can be tried twice.
But in an interview with the Phnom Penh Post in 1996, Hun Sen, an astute politician, explained that he had ensured the amnesty for Ieng Sary was carefully drafted - "the amnesty only covered his previous conviction. It did not give him immunity from prosecution at a future trial for his role in the genocide."
Given the importance of Ieng Sary, his detention can be counted as a diplomatic as well as a legal triumph for the ECCC.
The fourth suspect to be detained, Ieng Thirith, was the sister-in-law of the late Pol Pot: her sister, Khieu Ponnary, was his first wife. The remaining suspect to be arrested is Khieu Samphan.
Now the stage is more or less set for the trial to begin. After such a long and laborious prologue, all parties need to expedite the process and ensure that justice is served before these old men and women die or the tribunal's funds run out.
November 12, 2007
Tom Fawthrop
The Guardian Unlimited (UK)
He had been Pol Pot's foreign minister and deputy prime minister. He was China's most trusted contact among the inner circle of the genocidal regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975-79. But at 5.30am on Monday November 12, international law and justice finally caught up with him at his luxury mansion in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.
Cambodian police, acting on an arrest warrant from the jointly run Cambodian-UN Khmer Rouge tribunal (officially known by the acronym ECCC), arrested the 77-year-old Ieng Sary and his wife Ieng Thirith, the former minister for education in a regime that abolished schooling as well as money.
Asia's first genocide tribunal, that has frequently been bogged down by legal disputes and budgetary problems, is now close to finalising indictments against the five surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime, with four now in custody and one more expected to be arrested in the next few weeks.
According to a July 18 filing by prosecutors to the tribunal's judges, Ieng Sary, "promoted, instigated, facilitated, encouraged and/or condoned the perpetration of the crimes" when the Khmer Rouge held power.
It said there was evidence of Ieng Sary's participation in planning, directing and co-ordinating the Khmer Rouge "policies of forcible transfer, forced labour and unlawful killings".
However, the accused has denied all responsibility for the estimated 1.7 million deaths under the Khmer Rouge and claims that as a foreign minister he was not fully in the loop. In fact documents show that he ranked third in the Khmer Rouge hierarchy from 1975-77, with Nuon Chea, who has already been detained, ranking second.
His arrest is of great importance to the credibility of the Khmer Rouge tribunal. Many Cambodians and feared and international commentators predicted that Ieng Sary would be the one leader who would never be brought to justice, for a variety of reasons.
First, he is the only one who had previously been indicted for genocide, together with Pol Pot, immediately after the Vietnamese army toppled the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979.
leng Sary and Pol Pot were indicted for genocide by the Vietnamese-backed "People's tribunal", tried in absentia and sentenced to death.
The verdicts of the 1979 Phnom Penh tribunal were written off by western governments as "communist propaganda" to provide legitimacy for the newly established anti-Pol Pot government known as the Heng Samrin regime, backed by the former Soviet Union. Pol Pot died in 1998.
In 1996, leng Sary led a breakaway Khmer Rouge faction that greatly contributed to the eventual defeat of the insurgency. The Cambodian government pushed through an amnesty resolution as a reward, backed by parliament. That led to the king signing a pardon that lifted the death sentence and released leng Sary from the verdicts handed down by the 1979 tribunal. In addition, he was gifted with a diplomatic passport, without holding any official position.
In spite of his endorsement of the "killing fields" regime, leng Sary has enjoyed a very long and lavish immunity from prosecution. He enjoyed VIP status as Pol Pot's foreign minister at the UN during the 1980s. Washington's powerful lobby in the UN and arm-twisting of their client states worked a diplomatic miracle by extending UN recognition to a government that no longer existed, after being booted out of power in 1979.
His other great supporter has been China, who provided almost unlimited arms, bullets and tanks to the regime both when it was in power and long afterwards, as the Khmer Rouge continued for another 20 years to try and shoot their way back into power.
Cambodian human rights groups, knowing China feared embarrassing disclosures about their complicity with a murderous regime, feared Beijing would block a trial ever taking place. If the tribunal did go ahead, they were convinced that China would certainly protect leng Sary from prosecution.
During the 1980s, Ieng Sary was the favoured conduit for Chinese funds and he collected at least a million dollars a year from Beijing's embassy in Bangkok from 1979-1990. He also travelled on a Chinese passport.
Prime minister Hun Sen, probably at the behest of China, made several public comments that Ieng Sary should not be prosecuted at a time when aid from Beijing was rapidly increasing in the late 1990s.
Not surprising then, that so many believed that Ieng Sary could never be prosecuted, and it could all be justified with the convenient legal argument that no man can be tried twice.
But in an interview with the Phnom Penh Post in 1996, Hun Sen, an astute politician, explained that he had ensured the amnesty for Ieng Sary was carefully drafted - "the amnesty only covered his previous conviction. It did not give him immunity from prosecution at a future trial for his role in the genocide."
Given the importance of Ieng Sary, his detention can be counted as a diplomatic as well as a legal triumph for the ECCC.
The fourth suspect to be detained, Ieng Thirith, was the sister-in-law of the late Pol Pot: her sister, Khieu Ponnary, was his first wife. The remaining suspect to be arrested is Khieu Samphan.
Now the stage is more or less set for the trial to begin. After such a long and laborious prologue, all parties need to expedite the process and ensure that justice is served before these old men and women die or the tribunal's funds run out.
1 comment:
"Beyond the law no more," Ah Chkout???
Dream on, you idiot!
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