KRT co-prosecutors will confirm today whether to pursue Case 003 or not

Andrew Cayley (L) and Chea LEang (R) (Photo: ECCC, Pool)

18 May 2011
By Meas Mony
Free Press Magazine Online
Translated from Khmer by Soch
Click here to read the original article in Khmer

18 May is the last day for the 15-day period the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (KRT) had set for its co-prosecutors – who are currently opposed to one another – to complete their gathering of proofs for the judges to evaluate whether Case 003 will continue or not.

Dim Sovannarom, spokesman for the KRT, told reporters this morning that it is not known yet as to whether the co-prosecutors will issue their statements in writing or verbally, either publicly or to the judges. However, the co-prosecutors must clearly state their position as to whether Case 003 will proceed forward or not.

Recently, Andrew Cayley, the International co-prosecutor, indicated in his statement the crimes involved in Case 003 and he also called on the victims to bring forth their lawsuits in this criminal case. Subsequently, Chea Leang, the Cambodian co-prosecutor [who is Xok An’s niece], rejected this plan, claiming that this case does not fall under the KRT jurisdiction. According to Chea Leang, the KRT jurisdiction can only handle top-ranking former KR leaders who bear the highest responsibility in the genocide.

Cambodia War Crimes’ Tribunal Prosecutors at Odds

International prosecutor Andrew Cayley (2010 file photo) (Photo: AP)

Robert Carmichael, VOA
Phnom Penh May 13, 2011

Prosecutors at the Khmer Rouge war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh are at odds this week after investigating judges said they have completed their work on their third case - reportedly against two senior former military commanders. Critics accuse the government of interfering in the high-profile prosecutions.

The war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh has long been split over how many former Khmer Rouge cadres it should prosecute.

The international prosecutor Andrew Cayley said last year that he expected to see no more than 10 people stand trial for their alleged roles in the deaths of around two million people during the movement’s rule of Cambodia between 1975 and 1979.

Khmer Guardian's Statement and News

To: All Khmer Patriots

“The Sok An Connections”

Chea Leang (L) and Sok An (R), her uncle

The ECCC is full of Deputy Prime Minister Sok An’s special agents and CPP Party members. More than half of the ECCC senior administration and staff are either CPP Party members or pro-CPP “like-minded.” That’s why it didn’t surprise me when I heard that Khmer Co-prosecutor Chea Leang is the niece of Sok An, and that she refused to prosecute additional Khmer Krahom leaders. Chea Leang will do whatever her uncle Sok An tells her to do. She’s not in the ECCC to seek justices for the victims of the Khmer Krahom.

On May 10, 2011 Chea Leang announced that she has no plan to investigate and prosecute the Khmer Krahom suspects in Case 003 and Case 004 – even though it is a known fact that Meas Muth and Sou Met were former Khmer Krahom military commanders. They were both directly responsible for many killings during the Democratic Kampuchea Period.

Similarly, Mrs. Helen Jarvis, an Australian academic, who’s the ECCC Chief of Public Affairs and Head of the ECCC Victims, is a very good friend of Sok An. She visits Sok An at the Ministry of Council of Ministers quite often to inform and be advised on the ECCC matter. She’s been so good to Sok An that’s why he recently awarded her a Cambodian citizenship - Helen is also a member of the Leninist Party Faction in Australia.

The SRP Party MP Son Chhay was correct when he said that the government can’t find justice for the Khmer Krahom’s victims because the government leaders were former Khmer Krahom themselves!

A SPECIAL NOTE:
It’s great to work for changes alone, but it’s even better if we can work as a team! Be proud to be kon Khmer and help keep Khmer race and culture alive!

Why does Chea Leang, an ECCC prosecutor, visit Hanoi?

State President affirms close ties with Cambodia

03/30/2010
VOV News (Hanoi)

Vietnam wants to strengthen the traditional friendship, fine neighbourliness and cooperation with Cambodia, State President Nguyen Minh Triet told co-prosecutor Chea Leang at a reception in Hanoi on March 30.

Mr Triet acknowledged the positive developments in cooperative relations between the two countries through regular exchange of high-level visits, especially a Cambodia visit by Party General Secretary Nong Duc Manh last December.

He noted that bilateral ties in economics, trade and investment have grown and flourished recently and that Vietnamese businesses have increased investment in telecommunications, energy, mining, rubber plantation and waterways transport in Cambodia.

He welcomed the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the Supreme People’s Procuracy of Vietnam and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, laying a legal framework for increasing cooperation between the two agencies. He proposed that the two agencies implement the MoU effectively to help elevate bilateral relationship.

Ms Chea Leang briefed Mr Triet on the outcome of her working session with the Supreme People’s Procuracy of Vietnam and said both sides will work and build a mechanism for exchanging information and expertise.

She said her agency wants to make further contributions to strengthening the friendship and cooperation between Cambodia and Vietnam.

UN-Cambodian war crimes court is tested

February 19, 2009
By Peter Maguire
Boston Globe (Massachusetts, USA)

EARLIER this month, the controversy-plagued UN-Cambodian war crimes court announced that the trial of Khmer Rouge prison camp commandant Kaing Guek Eav, better known as "Brother Duch," would begin in March.

Almost as an afterthought, the court added that proceedings against the regime's political leaders Ieng Sary, Nuon Chea, and Khieu Samphan - the cases that will make or break these proceedings - would be delayed for yet another year.

While it is heartening to see Cambodia's war-crimes tribunal do something other than field pretrial motions, Duch is a garden-variety war criminal who could be quickly and easily convicted by a basic military tribunal for his well-documented violations of basic human rights norms.

If Cambodia's unwieldy mixed tribunal cannot speedily convict this bloodstained butcher, it stands no chance in the cases against the well-defended and unrepentant Khmer Rouge leaders, whose legal guilt is far more difficult to prove.

Duch, although a key functionary, was not a policy maker. The former teacher lorded over a prison, Tuol Sleng, that 16,000 to 20,000 entered and less than 20 survived. Before prisoners were killed, most were photographed, tortured, and interrogated. When the Vietnamese liberated the prison in 1979, a large portion of these meticulous photographic and documentary records were recovered. Even guards at Tuol Sleng feared for their lives - according to prison records, over 500 guards and staff members were killed for such seditious acts as breaking a shovel, screaming in their sleep, or destroying a hornet's nest.

When I asked Tuol Sleng survivor Bou Meng in 2003 what he would say to Duch if given the chance, he began to fish through his pocket and pulled out a photograph of a young woman. It was his wife, who had been killed at the prison. Bou Meng had found her photograph in the prison archive the day before.

"She was tortured and killed," he said, as tears began to well in his eyes. "I would demand the return of my wife and child."

Unlike the Khmer Rouge political leaders who continue to deny knowledge of atrocities and even of Tuol Sleng Prison, Duch is now an evangelical Christian who has stoically accepted his fate, admitted his guilt, and taken responsibility for his actions.

"I am sorry," Duch told Nic Dunlop, the journalist who found him in 1999. "The people who died were good people."

Today, the former Tuol Sleng Prison chief freely admits that many of the prisoners were innocent. But he adds, "whoever was arrested had to die. It was the rule of the party."

However salacious the gory details of the Duch case might be, it is legally and politically simple. Some speculate that the Cambodian government is serving up this easily convicted thug as a sacrificial lamb in the hopes that the other over-80 defendants won't live long enough to see the inside of the courtroom. If nothing else, we might finally learn whether or not there were "Chinese advisors" inside Tuol Sleng.

The announcement of the start of the Duch trial was quickly overshadowed by UN prosecutor Robert Petit's decision to open new criminal investigations and possibly issue more indictments.

It did not take the Cambodian co-prosecutor Chea Leang (niece of Deputy Prime Minister Sok An) long to reject the move on both practical and political grounds. If nothing else, the UN's attempt to broaden this criminal inquiry will serve both as a test of the mixed tribunal's legitimacy and its ability to function as a court.

For many years, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen was firmly in control of these proceedings, but by opening further criminal investigations, the UN has challenged his control. What remains to be seen is whether or not the Cambodian prime minister has the political will to try the Khmer Rouge political leaders.

If nothing else, the Cambodian strongman and his minions at the mixed tribunal are quickly learning a point best made by German political theorist Otto Kircheimer in his classic 1961 study, "Political Justice":

"Justice in political matters is more tenuous than in any other field of jurisprudence, because it can so easily become a mere farce."

Peter Maguire is the author of "Facing Death in Cambodia." A version of this piece first appeared in the International Herald Tribune.

Khmer Rouge Figure to Go Before Court

Sunday, February 15, 2009
By Tim Johnston
Washington Post Foreign Service

BANGKOK -- On Tuesday, after more than 30 years of delays and controversy, a member of Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge regime will appear in court for the first time charged with crimes against humanity.

Kaing Khek Iev, better known by his nom de guerre, Duch, was the head of the Tuol Sleng interrogation center in the capital, Phnom Penh. More than 15,000 people are believed to have passed through the center, known as Security Prison 21 during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-1979 rule. Only 12 are known to have survived.

Duch, who converted to Christianity in the late 1990s, is the only high-profile member of the Khmer Rouge to have expressed remorse for his actions. The 66-year-old former math teacher will appear for an initial hearing before the U.N.-backed tribunal Tuesday and is expected to take the stand later in his trial, providing an insight into the mind-set behind one of the 20th century's most brutal political experiments.

"We want to understand why this human being did what he did to other human beings," said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia.

As many as 1.7 million Cambodians -- about a fifth of the population -- were killed or succumbed to disease, malnutrition and overwork in the four years before Vietnamese forces removed the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979.

Despite that shocking toll, only five people have been indicted by the joint Cambodian and international legal entity set up after prolonged negotiations between the United Nations and the Cambodian government.

Duch's fellow indictees are Nuon Chea, the movement's deputy leader, known as Brother No. 2 during the regime; Khieu Samphan, the Khmer Rouge president; Ieng Sary, the group's foreign minister; and his wife, Ieng Thirith, who was the social affairs minister. They are all fighting the charges.

Pol Pot, the architect of the regime's brutal policies, died -- apparently of natural causes -- in 1998.

The trials have so far cost more than $50 million and have been dogged by persistent rumors of corruption and allegations that the Cambodian government, which is led by former Khmer Rouge officer Hun Sen, has tried to hold up the process.

A public dispute broke out late last year between Chea Leang, the Cambodian co-prosecutor and a niece of one of Hun Sen's deputies, and Robert Petit, her international counterpart.

The court has investigated an additional six senior members of the Khmer Rouge, and Petit wanted them charged. Chea Leang objected, saying that the investigations should not proceed "on account of Cambodia's past instability and the continued need for national reconciliation."

The court's supporters say they hope the trials will promote reconciliation in their own way, but with a recent survey showing that 85 percent of Cambodians know little or nothing about the process, some critics are asking how much they will mean for ordinary people who still have to live alongside their former tormentors.

Cambodia finally plans trials of former Khmer Rouge leaders

Ney Thol, an army general and senior member of Hun Sen's party, he has drawn criticism from human rights groups for his rulings against Hun Sen's chief political rivals
Chea Leang recently argued that putting more than five figures on trial could endanger national stability. She is also the niece of Sok An, Hun Sen's deputy prime minister (Photo: AFP)

In this file photo, a Cambodian Buddhist monk looks at the torture chambers in Tuol Sleng prison which is now a museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. A UN-backed tribunal announced recently it would put the first of five former Khmer Rouge leaders before a panel of Cambodian and international judges on Feb. 17 on charges of crimes against humanity. The trials of the other four, all old and ailing, are unlikely to begin until 2010.

Thursday February 12th, 2009
By DENIS D. GRAY The Associated Press

KOMPONG SPEU, Cambodia - Im Savoeun remembers how they clung to each other for the last time, sobbing, as life drained from her husband after a savage beating by the Khmer Rouge. The starving man's crime was stealing a potato.

"I could not help him. There was no medicine. The only thing I could give him were my tears," says the 64-year-old woman, who like countless Cambodians, has spent half a lifetime grieving and waiting for justice.

In 2009, after years of political sabotage, judicial bickering, corruption allegations and funding shortages, the Khmer Rouge is likely to begin facing retribution for the crimes of its 1970s reign of terror.

A UN-backed tribunal announced it would put the first of five former Khmer Rouge leaders before a panel of Cambodian and international judges Feb. 17 on charges of crimes against humanity. The trials of the other four, all old and ailing, are unlikely to begin until 2010.

Stepping first into the 504-seat courtroom will be 65-year-old Kaing Guek Eav, who headed the Khmer Rouge's largest torture centre. The others are Khieu Samphan, the group's former head of state; Ieng Sary, its foreign minister; his wife Ieng Thirith, who was minister for social affairs; and Nuon Chea, the movement's chief ideologue. They face a maximum of life imprisonment.

The trials will place Cambodia among a half-dozen countries that have been caught up in international criminal trials for crimes against humanity in the past 15 years. But the Cambodian process has had a particularly stormy history, and it faces skepticism about its fairness and scope, and suspicions that some pretext or other will halt it altogether.

"Even if we condemn five or 10 at the tribunal, there will be no balance because they killed millions," says Im Savoeun, who lost four other family members. "My husband and son can never come back to me, but at least they will have received some justice."

Inflamed by an ultra-communist vision, the Khmer Rouge sought to eradicate traditional Cambodian society and begin again from "year zero." They turned the country into a vast slave labour camp, abolishing all freedoms. At least 1.7 million, some say more than two million, died of starvation, disease and executions during this primitive experiment in human engineering.

Despite the scale of atrocities, the Cambodian side at the tribunal, called the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia, has sought to strictly limit the court's reach. It recently refused a proposal by Robert Petit, the Canadian international co-prosecutor, to cast the net wider and try up to five more former Khmer Rouge figures.

Even this would not satisfy many critics and victims.

"You can't have two million people dead, try five or 10 cases and call it a day. That may be all they do, but we are not going to say that justice was done no matter how well that process goes," says Brad Adams of the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

"The reason we want more than 10 is because there are dozens of people with thousands of deaths on their hands running around out there still. They deserve their day in court."

But Prime Minister Hun Sen's government is full of former Khmer Rouge higher-ups, himself included, and has little to gain from the trials. In 1998, he declared that Cambodians "should dig a hole and bury the past."

"There is fear among the Cambodian government. The former Khmer Rouge are asking: 'Who is next?'" says Youk Chhang, who heads The Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which has collected some one million documents related to the Khmer Rouge terror.

Adams, an American who has monitored the court's progress since it was proposed 13 years ago, said, "There has been political interference that intentionally slowed the whole process down just to basically play out the clock on the possibility that some defendants would die."

He and others allege that Cambodian judges have received instructions from the Ministry of Interior on how to act. One judge, Ney Thol, has been particularly singled out. An army general and senior member of Hun Sen's party, he has drawn criticism from human rights groups for his rulings against Hun Sen's chief political rivals.

In an open admission that the trial has more to do with internal politics than standards of international justice, Cambodian co-prosecutor Chea Leang recently argued that putting more than five figures on trial could endanger national stability.

While Japan's contribution this month of $21 million has at least temporarily allayed fears the court might run out of funding, an investigation into alleged corruption - including the buying of positions on the court - has still to be concluded.

Lawyers for Nuon Chea, the ideologue, say the alleged corruption "could undermine the fundamental right to a fair trial."

Petit isn't giving up. "There is still a fair chance that the tribunal will realize a limited measure of justice. It will help set the historical record once and for all and will help people understand and believe what happened here," he said in an interview.

Despite their long wait, nationwide surveys show that more than 80 per cent of Cambodians back the trials.

Those victims who had tried to put the horror behind them began reliving it when the prospect of trials arose, and to abort the process would cause huge frustration, says Pung Chhiv Kek, a human rights campaigner.

Brother Duch in the dock [-Meanwhile Brother Hun Sen and Sister Chea Leang are trying to turn justice into a "mere farce"]

Thursday, February 12, 2009
By Peter Maguire
International Herald Tribune (Paris, France)

Last week, the controversy-plagued UN-Cambodian war crimes court announced that the trial of Khmer Rouge prison camp commandant Kaing Guek Eav, better known as "Brother Duch," would begin in March.

Almost as an afterthought, the court added that proceedings against the regime's political leaders, Ieng Sary, Noun Chea, and Khieu Samphan - the cases that will make or break these proceedings - would be delayed for yet another year.

While it is heartening to see Cambodia's war-crimes tribunal do something other than field pre-trial motions, Duch is a garden variety war criminal who could be quickly and easily convicted by a basic military tribunal for his well documented violations of basic human rights norms.

If Cambodia's unwieldy mixed tribunal cannot speedily convict this bloodstained butcher, it stands no chance in the cases against the well-defended and unrepentant Khmer Rouge leaders, whose legal guilt is far more difficult to prove.

Duch, although a key functionary, was not a policy maker. The former teacher lorded over a prison, Tuol Sleng, that 16,000-20,000 entered and less than 20 survived. Before prisoners were killed, most were photographed, tortured and interrogated. When the Vietnamese liberated the prison in 1979, a large portion of these meticulous photographic and documentary records were recovered. Even guards at Tuol Sleng feared for their lives - according to prison records, over 500 guards and staff members were killed for such seditious acts as breaking a shovel, screaming in their sleep or destroying a hornet's nest.

Duch told his staff at one meeting in 1976, "Kindness is misplaced. You must beat him to get at the deep things." A former Tuol Sleng guard and alleged "killing fields" executioner, Him Huy, told me in 1998 that if Duch ordered the killings of high ranking prisoners, he "also went with us to check."

Once the paperwork was complete and the executioners had "gathered their strength," Huy told me, the victims were "ordered to knee on the edge of the hole. Their hands cuffed behind them, then they were beaten on their nape with an oxcart axle - an iron tube."

When I asked Tuol Sleng survivor Bou Meng in 2003 what he would say to Duch if given the chance, he began to fish through his pocket and pulled out a photograph of a young woman. It was his wife, who had been killed at the prison. Bou Meng had found her photograph in the prison archive the day before.

"She was tortured and killed," he said as tears began to well in his eyes, "I would demand the return of my wife and child."

Unlike the Khmer Rouge political leaders who continue to deny knowledge of atrocities and even of Tuol Sleng Prison, Duch is now an evangelical Christian who has stoically accepted his fate, admitted his guilt, and taken responsibility for his actions.

"I am sorry," Duch told Nic Dunlop, the journalist who found him in 1999, "The people who died were good people."

Today, the former Tuol Sleng Prison chief freely admits that many of the prisoners were innocent. But he adds, "whoever was arrested had to die. It was the rule of the party."

However salacious the gory details of the Duch case might be, it is legally and politically simple. Some speculate that the Cambodian government is serving up this easily convicted thug as a sacrificial lamb in the hopes that the other over-80 defendants won't live long enough to see the inside of the courtroom. If nothing else, we might finally learn whether or not there were "Chinese advisors" inside Tuol Sleng.

The announcement of the start of the Duch trial was quickly overshadowed by UN prosecutor Robert Petit's decision to open new criminal investigations and possibly issue more indictments.

Given that Cambodia's mixed tribunal has already burned through its original budget and taken longer to erect a court than it took the United States, Britain and France to try more than 6,000 suspected war criminals in Europe and Asia after World War II, Petit's announcement was oddly presumptuous.

It did not take the Cambodian co-prosecutor Chea Leang (niece of Deputy Prime Minister Sok An) long to reject the move on both practical and political grounds. If nothing else, the UN's attempt to broaden this criminal inquiry will serve both as a test of the mixed tribunal's legitimacy and its ability to function as a court.

For many years, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen was firmly in control of these proceedings, but by opening further criminal investigations, the UN has challenged his control. What remains to be seen is whether or not the Cambodian prime minister has the political will to try the Khmer Rouge political leaders.

If nothing else, the Cambodian strongman and his minions at the mixed tribunal are quickly learning a point best made by German political theorist Otto Kircheimer in his classic 1961 study, "Political Justice": "Justice in political matters is more tenuous than in any other field of jurisprudence, because it can so easily become a mere farce."

Peter Maguire, author of "Law and War: An American Story" and "Facing Death in Cambodia," has taught the law and theory of war at Columbia University and Bard College.

ECCC Co-prosecutors arguments for and against the inclusion of additional suspects in the KR crimes

International co-prosecutor Robert Petit (L) and National co-prosecutor Chea Leang (R) (Photo: John Vink/Magnum)

Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
Office of the Co-Prosecutors

5 January 2009

STATEMENT OF THE CO-PROSECUTORS

On 29 December 2008, the National Co-Prosecutor filed her Response with the Pre-Trial Chamber to the International Co-Prosecutor’s Statement of Disagreement, which was filed on 1 December 2008. The disagreement concerns the appropriateness of opening new judicial investigations against certain additional suspects for crimes committed under the Khmer Rouge. The Statement of Disagreement and the Response contain reasons justifying the two Co-Prosecutors’ positions in favor of charging or not charging these suspects.

The International Co-Prosecutor has proposed the filing of two new Introductory Submissions and one Supplementary Submission as, according to him, there are reasons to believe that (1) the crimes described in those submissions were committed, (2) these crimes are within the jurisdiction of this Court, and (3) they should be investigated by the Co-Investigating Judges. He believes that this last set of cases to be prosecuted by this Court would lead to a more comprehensive accounting of the crimes that were committed under the Democratic Kampuchea regime during 1975-79. He does not believe that such prosecutions would endanger Cambodia’s peace and stability.

The National Co-Prosecutor believes that these investigations should not proceed on account of (1) Cambodia’s past instability and the continued need for national reconciliation, (2) the spirit of the agreement between the United Nations and the Government of Cambodia (“Agreement”) and the spirit of the law that established this Court (“ECCC Law”), and (3) the limited duration and budget of this Court. She feels that this Court should instead prioritize the trials of the five suspects already detained, especially when, according to her, the Agreement and the ECCC Law envisioned only a small number of trials. She maintains that this Court’s mandate can be adequately fulfilled by the prosecution of the suspects already detained.

The Co-Prosecutors are issuing this statement pursuant to Internal Rule 54 to ensure that the public is duly informed of ongoing ECCC proceedings. They now await the determination of this disagreement by the Pre-Trial Chamber. This adjudicatory process is, by law, confidential. Notwithstanding this disagreement, the Co-Prosecutors have been and shall continue to work together, in all their cases, to ensure that justice is rendered to the victims of the Khmer Rouge.

- End -

KRT prosecutors at impasse

All in the CPP family: Chea Leang (L) and her powerful CPP uncle, Sok An

Wednesday, 31 December 2008
Written by Brendan Brady
The Phnom Penh Post

With the first trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders expected in early 2009, prosecutors clash on whether to add new suspects to the tribunal's docket

CHEA Leang, Cambodia's co-prosecutor to the Kingdom's Khmer Rouge tribunal, has reaffirmed her opposition to investigating more potential defendants, her foreign counterpart Robert Petit said Tuesday, setting the stage for further possible delays to the war crimes court.

Chea Leang filed a response at the tribunal's Pre-Trial Chamber to Petit's own "statement of disagreement" lodged earlier this month after the pair failed to agree on Petit's proposal to submit more suspects for investigation.

While Petit has refused to confirm any figures, sources close to the court say that six additional former regime members have been targeted.

Chea Leang could not be reached for comment on Tuesday, but Petit said their difference of opinion was "significant ... [and] fundamental".

"We're going ahead with the disagreement procedure," Petit told the Post.

He said, however, the rebuff by his counterpart would not change his mind. "I proceeded ... because I believed there was evidence [to try additional suspects] and it's in our mandate to do so," he said.

While he was "not optimistic" he could reach an agreement with Chea Leang on his own, he said they would "continue to speak regularly and cooperate".

Even as the Pre-Trial Chamber has no timeline for resolving the impasse, court officials insisted it would not delay the legal proceedings of the five former regime leaders in custody.

Reach Sambath, spokesman for the Cambodian side of the hybrid court, said the disagreement would not affect the substance or timing of the current docket since the pretrial and trial proceedings are presided over by a different team of judges.

Spokeswoman Helen Jarvis said the disagreement was inherent to the tribunal's evolution. "You can't expect everyone to have the same point of view," she said.

Meanwhile, legal observers like Open Society Justice Initiative have urged the Cambodian side of the court to demonstrate its independence by allowing further investigations to begin.

Many senior government posts are currently held by former Khmer Rouge cadre, and experts say the government fears a wider roundup could expose them to scrutiny.

Sacrava's Political Cartoon: Net 3

Click on the cartoon to zoom in
Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

[Hun Sen is] willing to have a trial - but only as long as it's a symbolic trial and it doesn't come within a mile of anyone he wants to protect

The courtroom at Cambodia's Extraordinary Chambers may see its first trial next year. (Photo by: Tracey Shelton)

Court casts wide net, but at what cost?

Wednesday, 24 December 2008
Written by Cat Barton
The Phnom Penh Post

NEXT in the dock
CASE ONE

• Duch aka Kaing Guk Eav, former head of S-21 prison, charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes. His trial is expected early next year.

CASE TWO

• Ieng Sary former KR foreign minister
• Ieng Thirith former minister of social action.
• Khieu Samphan former head of state
• Nuon Chea Pol Pot's top lieutenant

The Khmer Rouge tribunal is seeking to broaden its investigations with a second submission, but with the Cambodian prosecutor already hestitant, critics ask: 'What will the govt do?'

WITH the Cambodian co-prosecutor resisting a proposed investigation into six more potential suspects at the Kingdom's war crimes court, critics warn the appearance of government interference could destroy the UN-backed tribunal's legitimacy.

Many senior government posts are occupied by former Khmer Rouge cadre, and experts say the government fears that a wider roundup could expose senior officials to scrutiny.

"The more the tribunal starts to spread its net, the more it will get close to people who are close to the powerholders today," said Philip Short, historian and author of Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare.

"Hun Sen doesn't want that - and that is why his government has been dragging its feet for so long," he added.

At the centre of the controversy is Cambodian co-prosecutor Chea Leang, who was appointed by the Cambodian government and, according to a 2006 article in the International Justice Tribune, is Deputy Prime Minister Sok An's niece.

Five senior Khmer Rouge leaders believed to be the architects of the regime's brutal policies are in detention at the court: former head of state Khieu Samphan; foreign affairs minister Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith, the regime's first lady; S-21 head Duch; and Pol Pot's chief lieutenant, Nuon Chea.

A second batch of suspects would require the court to move further down the regime's hierarchy - something Hun Sen's government has long resisted.

"The Hun Sen government, for obvious reasons, wants to keep the list of accused to a handful of highly symbolic and high-profile Khmer Rouge figures who have [had] nothing whatever to do with the present government or previous governments in which Hun Sen has been a player," Short told the Post via email Monday.

"Hun Sen himself was a KR deputy regimental commander. Sure, it was a low-ranking post - and when he realised he was in danger, he fled.

But he was part of the KR, and he remained part of the KR until 1977. By that time, lots of abominable things had happened," Short added.

Senate President Chea Sim was formerly a Khmer Rouge district chief, while president of the National Assembly, Heng Samrin, was a Khmer Rouge division commander, which is "a relatively important post".

"Keat Chhon was minister of state in Pol Pot's office when Pol Pot was prime minister. Does he really bear no responsibility for the actions of a regime of which he was a government minister?" Short asked.

Despite their previous roles, however, no evidence has ever surfaced that any of the country's current senior leaders were responsible for crimes committed during the regime.

Why spread the net wider?

"People come to court to hear who killed their father, who ordered their sister to be raped or why was he transferred," said the court's international co-prosecutor Robert Petit in an interview Monday, discussing the very personal level on which victims view war crimes tribunals.

"When it is people [in the dock] who are deemed to be architects of one of those conflicts, they generally go away disappointed as they haven't heard that explanation," he added.

Duch's case, which likely will be the first to be heard early next year, has been separated from the other four detainees - all senior KR leaders - who collectively make up the second case.

When the trials of the senior leaders begin, the court may skirt the finer details of the Khmer Rouge's crimes, instead focusing on proving a link between the senior leaders in the dock and the atrocities in question.

"You seldom find that memo, ‘Please kill everyone, signed, Me'," Petit said.

"The issues in these cases are usually the linkage between the crime base and the suspects. Whereas, if you go down the food chain, you are more close to the crime base, more close to the actual carrying out of orders and the actual responsibility, the direct committing or direct responsibility - and that helps people understand a little bit better what happened."

But Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), expressed concern that the court, which has already blown its original budget and timeframe, could be overstretched by new cases, which could jeopardise the progress it has already made.

"The credibility of the [Extraordinary Chambers] depends on the trials of the five defendants who are now in its hands," Youk Chhang said.

"The victims want to know from the ECCC ... when will the trials be taking place. Without completing this important stage of the process, it will be difficult to discuss other investigations. In fact, it would generate negative effects on the current proceedings," he said.

Despite a recent fundraising drive, the Cambodian side of the court, failing further contributions, will run out of money in March 2009, court officials say. The UN side of the court will follow suit in May, according to court spokesman Reach Sambath. He added, however, that the court was "confident and optimistic" that further funds would be found.

Government interference?

Experts are wondering whether the government would dare seek to use Chea Leang to block the proposed further investigations.

"I suspect they wouldn't be happy and would do what they could," said David Chandler, historian and author of History of Cambodia.

"What they can do is clearly formidable, or we would have had this trial months, if not years ago," he told the Post via email Sunday.

Such government meddling would destroy the court's legitimacy, according to Open Society Justice Initiative's executive director, James Goldston.

"Tragically, the United Nations-backed court in Phnom Penh investigating and prosecuting those most responsible for the Khmer Rouge's crimes in Cambodia is at risk of doing just that," he wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published December 14.

Blocking the second set of prosecutions could exacerbate allegations that the co-prosecutor is acting at the behest of the Cambodian government.

"[Hun Sen is] willing to have a trial - but only as long as it's a symbollic trial and it doesn't come within a mile of anyone he wants to protect," said Short.