Courts Uphold Terrorism Verdict for 3 Men

By Chun Sakada, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
12 March 2008

The Supreme Court Wednesday upheld life sentences for three men found guilty of charges related to domestic terrorism.

Cambodian Sman Ismael and Thais Abdul Azi Haji Chiming and Muhammad Yalaludin Mading were sentenced in 2004 to life in prison by Phnom Penh Municipal Court for planning attacks on the several Western embassies.

The men were linked in court to Jemaah Islamiya, the reported Southeast Asian branch of al Qaeda, though human rights groups criticized the proceedings for a lack of transparency and evidence.

Supreme Court Judge Khem Pon, who presided over the five-judge court, said in his decision that the three men had conspired to terrorist acts and helped facilitate the preparation of terrorist attacks on US, British and Australian embassies in Phnom Penh.

"I think the Supreme Court has no justice, because there was no evidence and no witnesses against my clients," Kao Sopha, lawyer for the three men, said, adding that he would seek another way to free his clients.

"I am not a terrorist," Sman Ismael told reporters as he was moved from the courtroom into a prison van with the two other men. "I hope Prime Minister Hun Sen will help me, because I am a Cambodian national, and I only practice the Islamic religion. I have no intention to kill humans at all."

Murder conviction upheld on appeal [in the case of slain Cambodian immigrant mother of 3]

Friday, December 28, 2007
Henry K. Lee San Francisco Chronicle (California, USA)

A state appeals court has upheld the conviction of an Oakland man who shot and killed a Cambodian immigrant mother of three as she prepared to deliver The Chronicle with her husband.

Rondell Johnson was sentenced to 75 years to life in prison in Alameda County Superior Court for the Oct. 3, 2000, murder of Sareth So, 43, in front of her home on the 6200 block of Seminary Avenue in East Oakland.

Johnson, who was 20 at the time of the slaying, was also convicted of attempted murder, attempted robbery, robbery and assault with a firearm. Those involved a spree of robberies in the days before So was killed. The victims were picked at random, police said. Johnson was arrested on the day So was slain.

In his appeal, Johnson's lawyers said the police lineup procedure was unreliable and "unduly suggestive." But in a ruling Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the First District Court of Appeal rejected the claims.

"The record provides absolutely no basis to question the reliability of the evidence identifying defendant as the perpetrator of the many crimes for which he was convicted," wrote Justice Stuart Pollak.