Closing Order of Case 002 against Senior KR Leaders Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith

In light of the start of trial hearings beginning on 27 June 2011 of Case 002 against the surviving Khmer Rouge senior leaders Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith, KI Media is posting installations of the public document of the Closing Order of Case 002.  The Closing Order of the Co-Investigating Judges forms thebasic document from which all the parties (Co-Prosecutors, Co-Lead Lawyers for all civil parties, Defense Lawyers) will be making their arguments before the Trial Chamber judges (one Cambodian President, 2 Cambodian Judges, 2 UN judges).  Up until now, the hearings involving these four surviving senior Khmer Rouge leaders have been in the Pre-Trial Chamber over issues of pre-trial detention and jurisdictional issues.  Beginning in June 2011, the Trial Chamber will hear the substantive arguments over the criminal charges (e.g. genocide, crimes against humanity, penal code of 1956).  Available in Khmer and French. Contact the ECCC for a free copy. 

 

CLOSING ORDER

of Co-Investigating Judges You Bunleng and Marcel Lemonde

15 September 2010

 

 Koh Kyang Security Centre

 

 

Interrogation

528. Interrogations were typically conducted outside of the prison or in a separate interrogation house.²²⁷⁹ Prisoners were asked for their biographies and for the reason for their arrests and were accused of being members of the CIA or of supporting the Lon Nol regime.²²⁸⁰ Former prisoners recall that their confessions during interrogation were taken down in writing.²²⁸¹ One witness recalls: "Once in three, four days they took the documents to the upper and when the documents returned back, they transferred the people to be killed at night, ten, twenty at a time".²²⁸²

529. Prisoners were regularly subjected to serious mistreatment including being beaten, covered with plastic sheets and/or bags until suffocation as well as electrocution.²²⁸³ As a result of this, prisoners often died during interrogation.²²⁸⁴ One female prisoner states that a man touched her breast and her vagina and stripped off her clothes in order to inspect her body while one soldier was watching.²²⁸⁵ Iron shackles and electric generators were found inside Koh Kyang security centre shortly after the fall of the CPK regime in 1979.²²⁸⁶

Executions

530. Serious offenders who were to be executed would often be killed after two or three days of imprisonment²²⁸⁷ or, as one of the prisoners states, "those who would be executed were immediately taken out" ²²⁸⁸ Other prisoners were taken away, never to be seen again.²²⁸⁹ Some witnesses report that sick prisoners were sent to a "hospital" but that these people never returned their understanding being that they had been killed.²²⁹⁰ CPK cadres who were detained at Koh Kyang security centre included subdistrict chiefs and unit chiefs who had been accused of treason and who would be executed or disappeared. ²²⁹¹ One witness states that ethnic Vietnamese were also arrested, sent to Koh Kyang security centre, and

killed.²²⁹²

531. Executions were common at Koh Kyang security centre and CPK cadre would intentionally execute prisoners in front of others in order to deter them from trying to escape or engage in any other misbehaviour.²²⁹³ Execution methods included beating prisoners to death, killing them with axes, tying them together and drowning them (including entire families) or throwing them into a well.²²⁹⁴ Furthermore, prisoners were often disembowelled to serve as a warning to others.²²⁹⁵ Witnesses recall seeing human livers and gallbladders being dried on a large tree in the Koh Kyang security centre compound.²²⁹⁶ According to one witness, soldiers mixed gallbladders with wine and drank it and also cooked and ate livers.²²⁹⁷ Children were executed if they tried to escape or had secretly come to visit their parents.²²⁹⁸

532.                  Several witnesses state that during their detention they saw graves in the detention centre grounds, under coconut and mango trees.²²⁹⁹ Witnesses saw freshly dug pits, where bodies had been buried in order to serve as fertilizer and noticed the stench of decay emanating from the ground.²³⁰⁰ One witness, who was detained in 1977, was asked to excavate a mass grave in order to transfer the corpses to a new mass grave as there was a fear that the fluid from the corpses might have flowed into the well nearby.²³⁰¹ He was also, along with other prisoners, required to dig three to four graves in advance of executions, each grave containing two executed prisoners.²³⁰²

533.                  One witness, who lived close to Koh Kyang security centre and went to the prison compound in 1979 to release the prisoners and find his relatives, states that the graves had been disturbed by people looking for gold and that skulls and human remains were found alongside the graves.²³⁰³ The witness recalls that the Pagoda Committee collected the remains of more than 200 people and placed them at Ou Chrov Pagoda. He estimates that in

total 1,000 prisoners had been killed at Koh Kyang security centre.²³⁰⁴

***

Thirty six (36) civil parties were declared admissible with regards to Koh Kyang Security Center,²³⁰⁵ since the alleged crimes described in the application were considered as being more likely than not to be true, pursuant to Internal Rule 23 bis (4). These civil parties have provided sufficient elements tending to establish prima facie personal harm as a direct consequence of the crimes committed at Koh Kyang Security Center.