Duch sheds light on one testimony, while his lawyers discredit another

Kambol (Phnom Penh, Cambodia). 17/02/2009: Phork Khan and lawyer Martine Jacquin, at the opening of Duch’s trial at the ECCC (Photo: John Vink/ Magnum/ file picture)

10-07-2009
By Stéphanie Gée
Ka-set

Wednesday July 8th, the hearing opened with a twist in the case of witness Norng Chanphal, aged 8 when he was taken to S-21 with his mother. Phork Khan, another civil party, then finished testifying, after other contradictions were highlighted in his statement. He was then succeeded by a survivor of re-education centre Prey Sar (S-24), whose insufficiently focused examination lost sight of the facts being judged. The tribunal’s public gallery, which contains 500 seats, has continued to be filled with visitors. Last week, 2,078 people made the trip to the court to attend Duch’s trial.

Witness Chanphal’s mother was killed in S-21

The co-Prosecutors did not wait to announce the “good news:” the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-Cam) had just found the biography of Norng Chanphal’s mother, established in S-21. In the absence of such a document, the accused had said, during the survivor’s testimony on Thursday July 2nd, that the woman had not been imprisoned in the detention centre – nor had her son, as a consequence. After the new document was shown on the screen, the defence bowed while the accused recognised its authenticity and offered his apologies, through the intermediary of the judges, to Norng Chanphal. “The document is new. I was not aware of it at the time he testified, but I accept it.” As no parties raised any objection, the document was considered as added to the file and presented to the court.

An inaccurate written statement

The hearing of civil party Phork Khan, started on the previous day, resumed with questions from the office of the co-Prosecutors. He said he had not returned to the place he believed to be Choeung Ek, where he miraculously escaped certain death. With help from local human rights NGO Adhoc, Phork Khan filed an application to join Duch’s trial as a civil party in 2008. The application file contained his story, as recorded by the organisation. In light of the many contradictions that appeared on the previous day between his written and oral statements, the co-Prosecutors proceeded to some checking: “Were you read the document?” “I read it briefly [when it was communicated to me by the NGO],” the witness answered. “I did not read everything very carefully. I was told it was very urgent to send the document back quickly, so I hastily thumbprinted it.” And it was obvious he did not have a chance to proofread or update the statement before he appeared in court.

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Khmer Rouge fighter relates "killing fields" horror

Wed Jul 8, 2009

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A former fighter for the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s told a Cambodian court Wednesday how he was suspected of turning against the Pol Pot regime, arrested and beaten unconscious, waking up beneath bodies in a burial pit.

Phork Khan, 57, was testifying at the trial of Duch, head of the Khmer Rouge's S-21 interrogation center in Phnom Penh, who faces life in prison if convicted on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture and homicide.

Duch has admitted his part in the thousands of deaths at the prison but says he was only following orders. He has also questioned the reliability of some of the witnesses.

Phork Khan said he had become a fighter in 1971. "In Phnom Penh, in 1975, I took part in the liberation," he said. "At first I was quite happy, but after seeing the forced evacuation of the people and spraying of bullets to kill people by Khmer Rouge soldiers, I wasn't satisfied with that change in the situation."

As the regime purged suspected dissenters, he was arrested in 1978 and detained at S-21. "They tied up my legs and hands and put me face down. I was whipped and I could not move freely. I could barely stand the agony," he said.

One day, guards took him to the edge of a pit at the Choeung Ek "killing fields" near Phnom Penh.

"I did not know how many other prisoners were killed after I became unconscious. Only after I regained consciousness, I saw three dead bodies on top of me," he told the tribunal.

TESTIMONY QUESTIONED

More than 14,000 people died at the S-21 prison. Eight people have now provided testimony of their detainment, although Duch has questioned whether all of them really spent time there, and one of the judges has raised some doubts.

Judge Nil Nonn noted Tuesday that Phork Khan had failed to mention his horrific live burial in his pre-trial statement.

Tuesday, another survivor, Lay Chan, said he had been detained at S-21 for two months in 1976 and interrogated twice before his release. Duch responded that nobody was released from S-21 and Lay could therefore not have been held there.

Last week the court heard from two S-21 prisoners who said they had been spared because they were artists and Duch admired their portraits of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot.

Wednesday the court heard from a female survivor, Chin Meth, 51, who described a routine of forced labor followed by beatings during a 15-day stay at S-21 in 1977.

However, Duch queried her recollection, too, although he said she could have been detained and interrogated elsewhere.

"The fact is that if she was transferred to S-21, she would be dead. She could not be let out," Duch told the judges. "If people were transferred to S-21, they would be smashed."

Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, is the first of five detained Khmer Rouge leaders to face trial."Brother Number One" Pol Pot, whose regime fell after Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979, died in 1998 near the Thai-Cambodia border.

(Reporting by Stephen Kurczy, Editing by Alan Raybould)

Detained in S-21 or elsewhere: doubt over the testimonies of other survivors

Kambol (Phnom Penh, Cambodia). 16/02/2009: The statement made by civil party Phork Khan before the court differed from that he had previously made in writing. “The truth is what I told you orally.” (Photo: John Vink/ Magnum/file picture)

08-07-2009
By Stéphanie Gée
Ka-set

The hearing on Tuesday July 7th echoed that of the previous day. S-21 survivors who were until then unknown succeeded at the stand and gave testimonies that did not always tally the written statements they made in their civil party applications or the way they told their stories to journalists. In addition, they gave details that did not match what is known to this day of the infamous detention centre and, as the defence did not fail to point out, there did not seem to be any record of their stay in S-21. One believed them to be sincere when they told the sufferings they endured, but the doubt was there: were they actually detained in S-21 or in another prison? The embarrassing doubt may discredit their testimonies, but also those of indisputable survivors heard last week, prompting some to wonder about the groundwork that should have been done by their lawyers.

Not much in the file

Like on the previous day, the defence indicated from the outset they expressed doubts over the fact that the forthcoming witness was detained in S-21. Lay Chan, 55 years old, was a farmer who joined the revolutionary forces before 1975 and became a messenger for them. During 1976, he was arrested and imprisoned for some three months at S-21, he said, accused of participating to a “theft of rice for the enemy.” During his stay in what he believed to be the prison directed by the accused, the guards asked him to dig, outside and at night, holes for the planting of banana trees, as he was then explained. Blindfolded most of the time, all he saw was his airless individual cell that smelled of unimaginable stench, in which he could not stand because the ceiling was so low, he explained.

“Were you able to learn the name of your place of detention?”, president Nil Nonn asked him. “I didn’t know it at first. But one day, I overheard a conversation between two guards who said it was Tuol Sleng school. […] That’s how I was able to find out,” the witness, who joined as a civil party, answered. He only returned once to the premises since the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime. “The place had already been changed. It did not quite look like what it used to be anymore,” he commented.

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