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.
