Phnom Penh (dpa) - Former top Khmer Rouge leader Nuon Chea will stay in jail for at least a year facing charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the court set up to bring justice to the victims of the regime said Friday.
In a lengthy press statement explaining the charges and the decision, co-investigating judges of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) You Bunleng and Marcel Lemonde issued a provisional detention order against the 82-year-old former Khmer Rouge security chief who is also known as Brother Number 2.
The statement said Nuon Chea was being charged with crimes against humanity which encompasses murder, torture, imprisonment, persecution, extermination, deportation, forcible transfer, enslavement and "other inhumane acts."
War crimes was a charge based on the Geneva Convention and included wilful killing and wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury and wilful deprivation of rights to a fair trial, the statement said.
Co-investigators said they had decided to remand Nuon Chea because he posed a potential threat to witnesses.
"He is alleged to have, throughout Cambodia during the period April 17, 1975 to January 6, 1979 ... planned, instigated, ordered, directed or otherwise aided and abetted in the commission of the aforementioned crimes, by exercising authority and effective control over the internal security apparatus of Democratic Kampuchea," the statement said.
The only other man yet to be charged by the ECCC, former commandant of the notorious S-21 torture centre Duch, or Kang Keng Iev, alleged in 1999 that Nuon Chea instigated much of the killing during the Khmer Rouge's Democratic Kampuchea regime.
Up to 2 million Cambodians died during the reign of the ultra-Maoists.
"The co-prosecutors of the Extraordinary Chambers have requested the provisional detention of Nuon Chea on the grounds that there is a well-founded reason to believe that he participated in the crimes," the statement said.
"(P)rovisional detention is necessary to prevent any pressure on witnesses, especially those who were under his authority, and any destruction of evidence; that detention is also necessary to ensure the presence of the charged person during the proceedings, given the danger of his fleeing, and to protect his safety; and that, finally, it is necessary to preserve public order."
It said Nuon Chea had maintained his innocence, "indicating that he would be ashamed to have committed such crimes and specifying that 'we did not have any direct contact with the bases and we were not aware of what was happening there'."
"In light of the many documents and witness statements implicating Nuon Chea, there are well-founded reasons to believe that he committed the crimes with which he is charged," the co-investigators alleged.
"These crimes are of a gravity such that, 30 years after their commission, they still profoundly disrupt public order to such a degree that it is not excessive to conclude that the release of the charged person risks provoking, in the fragile context of today's Cambodian society, protests of indignation which could lead to violence and perhaps imperil the very safety of the charged."
It said the co-investigators ordered him to be placed in custody for "at least a year" and that he faced life imprisonment if convicted.
Nuon Chea has retained a Cambodian lawyer, Son Arun, and said just prior to his arrest that he planned to fight the charges.
The 56-million-dollar joint UN-Cambodia ECCC is expected to charge at least five people with involvement in one of the bloodiest regimes of the last century.
Former leader Pol Pot died at home in 1998. Former military commander Ta Mok, whom Nuon Chea blames for the crimes he is charged with, died in hospital of age related complications last year.
In a lengthy press statement explaining the charges and the decision, co-investigating judges of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) You Bunleng and Marcel Lemonde issued a provisional detention order against the 82-year-old former Khmer Rouge security chief who is also known as Brother Number 2.
The statement said Nuon Chea was being charged with crimes against humanity which encompasses murder, torture, imprisonment, persecution, extermination, deportation, forcible transfer, enslavement and "other inhumane acts."
War crimes was a charge based on the Geneva Convention and included wilful killing and wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury and wilful deprivation of rights to a fair trial, the statement said.
Co-investigators said they had decided to remand Nuon Chea because he posed a potential threat to witnesses.
"He is alleged to have, throughout Cambodia during the period April 17, 1975 to January 6, 1979 ... planned, instigated, ordered, directed or otherwise aided and abetted in the commission of the aforementioned crimes, by exercising authority and effective control over the internal security apparatus of Democratic Kampuchea," the statement said.
The only other man yet to be charged by the ECCC, former commandant of the notorious S-21 torture centre Duch, or Kang Keng Iev, alleged in 1999 that Nuon Chea instigated much of the killing during the Khmer Rouge's Democratic Kampuchea regime.
Up to 2 million Cambodians died during the reign of the ultra-Maoists.
"The co-prosecutors of the Extraordinary Chambers have requested the provisional detention of Nuon Chea on the grounds that there is a well-founded reason to believe that he participated in the crimes," the statement said.
"(P)rovisional detention is necessary to prevent any pressure on witnesses, especially those who were under his authority, and any destruction of evidence; that detention is also necessary to ensure the presence of the charged person during the proceedings, given the danger of his fleeing, and to protect his safety; and that, finally, it is necessary to preserve public order."
It said Nuon Chea had maintained his innocence, "indicating that he would be ashamed to have committed such crimes and specifying that 'we did not have any direct contact with the bases and we were not aware of what was happening there'."
"In light of the many documents and witness statements implicating Nuon Chea, there are well-founded reasons to believe that he committed the crimes with which he is charged," the co-investigators alleged.
"These crimes are of a gravity such that, 30 years after their commission, they still profoundly disrupt public order to such a degree that it is not excessive to conclude that the release of the charged person risks provoking, in the fragile context of today's Cambodian society, protests of indignation which could lead to violence and perhaps imperil the very safety of the charged."
It said the co-investigators ordered him to be placed in custody for "at least a year" and that he faced life imprisonment if convicted.
Nuon Chea has retained a Cambodian lawyer, Son Arun, and said just prior to his arrest that he planned to fight the charges.
The 56-million-dollar joint UN-Cambodia ECCC is expected to charge at least five people with involvement in one of the bloodiest regimes of the last century.
Former leader Pol Pot died at home in 1998. Former military commander Ta Mok, whom Nuon Chea blames for the crimes he is charged with, died in hospital of age related complications last year.
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