Judges accused as Pol Pot aides face trial

CLOWNs-IN-JUSTICE ROBE No.1 and No. 2: Bandit You Bunleng and Herr Doktor Siegfried Blunk

June 20 2011
By Tim Johnston in Bangkok
Financial Times

The four most senior surviving members of the Khmer Rouge regime that devastated Cambodia more than three decades ago will finally face their accusers in court next Monday.

But the trial comes as the international justice system hearing the case is also in the dock. A dispute over alleged government interference has divided the court and created what one official describes as a “toxic atmosphere of mutual mistrust”.

More than 30 years after the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot was driven from Phnom Penh, leaving tens of thousands dead in the city and a nation in ruins, Nuon Chea, known as “brother number two”; Khieu Samphan, formerly president of the then Democratic Republic of Kampuchea; Ieng Sary, the regime’s foreign minister; and Ieng Tirith, his wife and minister of social welfare, face charges of crimes against humanity, genocide, murder and torture.

Some 1.7m Cambodians were killed or died through overwork, starvation or disease during Pol Pot’s attempt to create an agrarian utopia between 1975 and 1979.

After years of inaction following the fall of the regime, the UN and the Cambodian authorities agreed in 2006 to set up a hybrid court staffed by local and international judges and lawyers to try the leaders. But the process, which has so far cost $110m, has been controversial. There have been allegations of corruption and government interference in the past.

But in the past few weeks a new row has broken out, with accusations that key members of the court are trying to limit to five the number of people who face justice in an effort to prevent efforts by international officials to widen the net.

The court has so far convicted just one person. Kaing Guek Eav, the commandant of Tuol Sleng torture centre, who is better known by his nom de guerre Duch, was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted last year on similar charges.

The new case will be substantially more complicated: not only are there four defendants but, unlike Duch, they have also indicated their intention to plead not guilty.

Andrew Cayley, the British co-prosecutor, said he remained confident.

“I think the evidence is very strong in this case,” said Mr Cayley, who has worked on the international prosecutions of Ratko Mladic, the Serbian military commander, and of crimes in Darfur, Sudan.

But the international judicial process in Cambodia is being called into question. At issue is a request by Mr Cayley for the court’s two investigating judges to examine two further cases, known as cases 003 and 004, involving five other defendants.

The move has divided the court, with the co-investigating judges – one from Cambodia and one from Germany – rejecting his request in the third case, which is believed to involve Meas Muth, a former commander of the Khmer Rouge navy, and Sou Met, the air force commander.

The decision has sparked allegations that the investigating judges have given in to political pressure.

“The failure to conduct a full investigation raises clear questions of political interference, since senior Cambodian government offic­ials, including the prime minister, have publicly opposed cases 003 and 004,” the Open Society Foundation, a think-tank, said in a recent report.

Mr Cayley has filed an appeal against the judges’ decision, prompting a public row.He declined to comment directly on the dispute but said he had never come under pressure. “I am applying every rule, all of the law of the court, to push these cases along.”

However, at least four staff members and a consultant have resigned from the office of the investigating judges in the past seven weeks, alleging bad faith.

Stephen Heder, a British historian and expert on the Khmer Rouge who serves as the court consultant, said the judges’ decision was “unreasonable”.

In his resignation letter, he cited a lack of confidence in their leadership and condemned “the toxic atmosphere of mutual mistrust generated by your management of what is now a professionally dysfunctional office”.