Four Guilty, One Released in Deminer Killing

By Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
14 October 2008

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Four former Khmer Rouge soldiers were sentenced up to 20 years in prison and one man was released Tuesday, following a murder trial for the death of a British deminer and his interpreter in 1996.

Christopher Howes and Hun Huoth were shot and killed in Anlong Veng following their abduction with other deminers from a site near Angkor Wat in March 1996.

Chiep Cheth, 33, was released Tuesday, when Phnom Penh Municipal Court announced a non-guilty verdict for his role in the killings. Chiep Cheth had said in his defense he had led a group of Khmer Rouge soldiers to the site where Howes and others were demining. Had he disobeyed, he said, he would have been killed.

The soldiers, who were under the command of notorious Khmer Rouge guerrilla Ta Mok, were found guilty Tuesday, following their one-day trial Oct. 3.

Khem Nguon, 58, a former commander in Anlong Veng, was sentenced to 20 years in prison, along with his subordinate, Loch Mao, 56, and his driver, Puth Lim, 57. Subordinate Sin Dorn, 52, was given 10 years in prison.

Khmer Rouge trio get 20 years for killing Briton

Tue Oct 14, 2008

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A Cambodian court sentenced three former Khmer Rouge soldiers to 20 years in jail on Tuesday for the murder of British de-miner Christopher Howes and his translator in 1996.

The trio told the court last week they had received orders directly from Khmer Rouge "Brother Number One" Pol Pot to kill Howes due to Britain's support for the Phnom Penh government that came to power after U.N.-backed elections in 1993.

Howes was working for Mines Advisory Group (MAG), a British-based charity, when he and his Cambodian interpreter were captured near the northwestern town of Siem Reap before being taken to the Khmer Rouge stronghold of Anlong Veng along the Thai border.

He was shot in the head in March 1996 after receiving a final meal of fruit, which he ate on the floor by the light of car headlights, the court heard last week.

Another former Khmer Rouge soldier, Chheam Chit, 38, was released by the court after trial judge Iv Kimsry accepted that he had been forced at gunpoint to lead the rebels to the place where they could ambush Howes.

"If I had not led them, they would have killed me," Cheam Chit told the courtroom, which was packed with British diplomats and representatives of MAG.

The murder of Howes, who was working to clear up the millions of landmines and unexploded bombs left by decades of civil war, outraged many ordinary Cambodians. A road was named after him in the heart of Phnom Penh.

(Reporting by Ek Madra; Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Alex Richardson)

KRouge fighters jailed for British mine clearer's murder

Former Cambodian Khmer Rouge rebel Khem Ngun covers his face as a policeman escorts him into court

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — A Cambodian court Tuesday sentenced four former Khmer Rouge guerrillas to up to 20 years in prison over the kidnapping and murder of a British mine clearer and his translator in 1996.

Three of the five accused were jailed for 20 years, a fourth for 10 years, while the fifth man was acquitted and released.

The international charity Mines Advisory Group, for which the two dead men worked, welcomed the verdict, saying their families were "extremely satisfied with today's outcome."

All five -- Khem Ngun, Puth Lim, Loch Mao, Sin Dorn and Cheap Chet -- were arrested over the past year, nearly a decade after a joint investigation into the incident by British and Cambodian police.

They proclaimed their innocence when they went on trial two weeks ago over the abduction and murder of Christopher Howes and translator Huon Huot.

But the judge convicted Khem Ngun, 58, Puth Lim, 57, and Loch Mao, 56, and sentenced each of them to 20 years in prison, while Sin Dorn, 52, was jailed for 10 years.

Judge Iv Kim Sri, reading out the verdict at the Phnom Penh court, ordered the men jointly to pay 10,000 dollars to the families of the victims.

Puth Lim again denied involvement. "The verdict is unjust for me. I did not kill them," he told reporters.

The fifth man, Cheap Chet, 33, was freed.

Howes and Huon Huot were shot a few days after they and the mine clearance team were seized near the famed Angkor Wat temples in northwest Cambodia.

At the time, the communist Khmer Rouge were battling government troops in the final years of Cambodia's drawn-out civil war.

Howes, 37, refused a chance to leave his kidnapped team of 20 mine clearers to retrieve a ransom.

While the rest were eventually released he and Huon Huot were taken deeper into rebel-held territory and killed.

Their remains were found in 1998, the same year Cambodia's civil war ended when the Khmer Rouge movement disintegrated.

"Today, we feel that justice has been done for our two colleagues who were brutally murdered whilst carrying out life-saving work," Mines Adivsory Group executive Lou McGrath said in a statement issued at the court.