By KER MUNTHIT
Associated Press Writer
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Ieng Sary, who served as foreign minister in Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge regime, and his wife were formally charged with crimes against humanity by the U.N.-backed genocide tribunal, the court said Tuesday.
Ieng Sary was charged additionally with war crimes, the tribunal said in a statement that was dated Monday but released Tuesday.
He and his wife, Ieng Thirith, who served as the regime's social affairs minister, said they needed time to prepare their defense and asked that their pretrial detention hearing be delayed until Wednesday. They would be held in police custody until then, the statement said.
The radical policies of the communist Khmer Rouge are widely blamed for the deaths of some 1.7 million people from starvation, disease, overwork and execution. None of the group's leaders has faced trial yet, though four people have been arrested by the tribunal.
The arrests Monday came almost three decades after the Khmer Rouge fell from power, with many fearing the aging suspects might die before they ever see a courtroom. Trials are expected to begin next year.
The U.N.-assisted tribunal was created last year after seven years of contentious negotiations between the United Nations and Cambodia.
Ieng Sary and his wife were members of the inner circle of the communist ruling group, French-educated like its charismatic leader, the late Pol Pot, whose radical vision resulted in waves of deadly political purges. The connection was made intimate by marriage: Ieng Thirith's sister Khieu Ponnary was Pol Pot's first wife.
Besides being deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Ieng Sary was a member of the policy-making central committee. But he also has been accused of being personally responsible for luring home diplomats and intellectuals from overseas. The returnees were arrested and put in re-education camps, and most were later executed.
Ieng Sary, "promoted, instigated, facilitated, encouraged and/or condoned the perpetration of the crimes" when the Khmer Rouge held power, according to a July 18 document presented by the tribunal's prosecutors to its investigating judges.
It said there was evidence Ieng Sary helped plan, direct and coordinate the Khmer Rouge "policies of forcible transfer, forced labor and unlawful killings."
"I have done nothing wrong," Ieng Sary, 77, told The Associated Press in October in Bangkok, Thailand, where he was visiting for a medical checkup.
His wife, Ieng Thirith, who is believed to be 75, is accused of participating in "planning, direction, coordination and ordering of widespread purges ... and unlawful killing or murder of staff members from within the Ministry of Social Affairs," the prosecutors' filing said.
At a trial conducted in 1979 under the auspices of Vietnam, which invaded Cambodia to oust the Khmer Rouge, Ieng Sary was sentenced to death in absentia. But the proceedings, in the fashion of a Soviet show trial, served the purposes of propaganda more than justice.
Because the U.S. and China opposed the government installed by the Vietnamese — and supported a resistance coalition in which the Khmer Rouge played a part — there was little backing for a genocide trial, even as the scale of the horrors the regime perpetrated became more obvious.
Only when the Khmer Rouge failed to honor a 1991 U.N.-brokered peace agreement did the idea of an international genocide trial gain traction. In 1997, Cambodia finally broached the idea.
Associated Press Writer
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Ieng Sary, who served as foreign minister in Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge regime, and his wife were formally charged with crimes against humanity by the U.N.-backed genocide tribunal, the court said Tuesday.
Ieng Sary was charged additionally with war crimes, the tribunal said in a statement that was dated Monday but released Tuesday.
He and his wife, Ieng Thirith, who served as the regime's social affairs minister, said they needed time to prepare their defense and asked that their pretrial detention hearing be delayed until Wednesday. They would be held in police custody until then, the statement said.
The radical policies of the communist Khmer Rouge are widely blamed for the deaths of some 1.7 million people from starvation, disease, overwork and execution. None of the group's leaders has faced trial yet, though four people have been arrested by the tribunal.
The arrests Monday came almost three decades after the Khmer Rouge fell from power, with many fearing the aging suspects might die before they ever see a courtroom. Trials are expected to begin next year.
The U.N.-assisted tribunal was created last year after seven years of contentious negotiations between the United Nations and Cambodia.
Ieng Sary and his wife were members of the inner circle of the communist ruling group, French-educated like its charismatic leader, the late Pol Pot, whose radical vision resulted in waves of deadly political purges. The connection was made intimate by marriage: Ieng Thirith's sister Khieu Ponnary was Pol Pot's first wife.
Besides being deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Ieng Sary was a member of the policy-making central committee. But he also has been accused of being personally responsible for luring home diplomats and intellectuals from overseas. The returnees were arrested and put in re-education camps, and most were later executed.
Ieng Sary, "promoted, instigated, facilitated, encouraged and/or condoned the perpetration of the crimes" when the Khmer Rouge held power, according to a July 18 document presented by the tribunal's prosecutors to its investigating judges.
It said there was evidence Ieng Sary helped plan, direct and coordinate the Khmer Rouge "policies of forcible transfer, forced labor and unlawful killings."
"I have done nothing wrong," Ieng Sary, 77, told The Associated Press in October in Bangkok, Thailand, where he was visiting for a medical checkup.
His wife, Ieng Thirith, who is believed to be 75, is accused of participating in "planning, direction, coordination and ordering of widespread purges ... and unlawful killing or murder of staff members from within the Ministry of Social Affairs," the prosecutors' filing said.
At a trial conducted in 1979 under the auspices of Vietnam, which invaded Cambodia to oust the Khmer Rouge, Ieng Sary was sentenced to death in absentia. But the proceedings, in the fashion of a Soviet show trial, served the purposes of propaganda more than justice.
Because the U.S. and China opposed the government installed by the Vietnamese — and supported a resistance coalition in which the Khmer Rouge played a part — there was little backing for a genocide trial, even as the scale of the horrors the regime perpetrated became more obvious.
Only when the Khmer Rouge failed to honor a 1991 U.N.-brokered peace agreement did the idea of an international genocide trial gain traction. In 1997, Cambodia finally broached the idea.
7 comments:
Your honor! With all due respect, as a defense attorney, I would respectfully request that the trial hearing of my beloved friends will be deferred until 2040.
Thank you, your honor!
Prime Minister Hun Sen's legal advisor
You two enjoyed your life and power while million of people wer suffering.
Now at your late age, your off-springs are living a crucial time: your fall, your dis-honor and your disgusted past.
Very funny, Dude.
Anyway who's the lawyer representing the Ieng? It look like the prosecutor has a strong allegation against them.
I hope the Ieng has a good team behind them.
See, sometime you don't want to be overconfidence and brag too much before you know what is behind the curton.
A lot of Khiev here? Deos it has anything to do with the Minister of information Khiev Kantharith? or Mr. Khiev Sam Phon? Anybody knows?
I do no understand what this justice all about in the unjustice unvirement?
They the ( COURT of justice?) try to ask people to be involved to sue of past crime while to day crime are commoued openly! Do I need to say it alll we all know about them?
The use some alian's word like "Enboraie" to show or confuse people of there superior knowledge of unjustice?
They are asking for more millioms for tha trail while the country is being destroy be drug dealers, human trafickers, and traitors!
And what happen in the court are keeping so quiet ans silent!
In case of "Enboraie and suing can we all hear what Duch, Noun Chea, Eang Sary and his wife have to say!
at lease we can make the judgement for ourselve not by the kicked back judges!
Give us a break you are fools not us. We small people just spit behind you so we not get killed in this UNJUST WORLD OF YOURS! stupid brain!!!! UN and the Communist!
Kick the UN out of Cambodia, and pull Cambodia out of UN. Problem solved!
CPP
Not quite, because then we might lose International Aids.
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