Cambodia court to open landmark KRouge trial

Monday, June 27, 2011
By Michelle Fitzpatrick (AFP)

PHNOM PENH — Four former top Khmer Rouge leaders go on trial for genocide at Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes court on Monday in a case described as the world's most complex in decades.

The trial has been long awaited by survivors of the brutal regime that wiped out nearly a quarter of the population during its 1975-79 reign of terror.

The elderly defendants, including "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea and former head of state Khieu Samphan, are to appear at an initial hearing at 09:00am (0200 GMT).

They face charges including genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes over the deaths of up to two million people from starvation, overwork, torture or execution during the country's "Killing Fields" era.

The genocide charges relate specifically to the murders of Vietnamese people and ethnic Cham Muslims.

The other defendants are former foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife, the ex-social affairs minister Ieng Thirith.

All four deny the accusations and the trial -- the court's second following the conviction of a notorious Khmer Rouge prison chief -- is likely to take years.

"There hasn't been a case as large and complex as this since Nuremberg," international co-prosecutor Andrew Cayley told AFP in a recent interview, referring to the landmark Nazi trials after World War II.

The initial hearing is scheduled to last four days and will focus on expert and witness lists and preliminary legal objections.

Full testimony from the suspects, who have been held at a purpose-built detention centre since their 2007 arrests, will not take place until late August at the earliest.

Hundreds of Cambodians are expected to travel to the court this week to see the four in the dock while some of the proceedings will also be broadcast on Cambodian television.

"The beginning of case two will be a cathartic moment for all Cambodians," said Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, whose father was killed by the Khmer Rouge.

In its first case, the court sentenced Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, to 30 years in jail last July for overseeing some 15,000 deaths at a torture prison.

The second trial is both more significant and complicated as it involves high-ranking leaders who are refusing to cooperate, as well as many more victims and crime sites.

Concerns over the health of the accused, aged 79 to 85, also hang over the court. They suffer from varying ailments and there are fears that not all of them will live to see a verdict.

Led by "Brother Number One" Pol Pot, who died in 1998, the communist regime emptied Cambodia's cities and abolished money and schools in a bid to create an agrarian utopia before they were ousted from the capital by Vietnamese forces.