U.N. Court in Cambodia Recommends Freeing Defendant Ill With Dementia

November 17, 2011
By SETH MYDANS
The NEw York Times

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A tribunal backed by the United Nations that is trying top leaders of the Khmer Rouge announced on Thursday that a sister-in-law of the regime’s former leader, Pol Pot, was unfit to stand trial and should be released because she suffers from dementia.

As minister for social affairs, the defendant, Ieng Thirith, 79, was the most powerful woman in the Khmer Rouge government, which was responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million people from 1975 to 1979 through execution, torture, forced labor, starvation and disease.

A court spokesman said that she would be released “as soon as practically possible” and would be “free to go wherever she wants,” unless prosecutors file an appeal, a process that could take weeks.

Only five senior members of the Khmer Rouge have been arrested, and Ms. Ieng Thirith would be the first to be set free.

One defendant, Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, 69, was convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison in July 2010 for his role as commandant of Tuol Sleng prison, where more than 14,000 people were sent to their deaths. The court reduced that term to 19 years because of time already served.

Opening statements were scheduled for Monday in the trial in which Ms. Ieng Thirith was a defendant, along with three other former members of the top leadership.

The court’s ruling severed her from the case even though a possible appeal may be pending, said Clair Duffy, who has observed the trial for the Open Society Justice Initiative, a private legal and human rights group.

Ms. Ieng Thirith was charged with crimes against humanity, genocide, homicide and other crimes for what the indictment said was her role in “planning, direction, coordination and ordering of widespread purges.”

In a statement on Thursday, the court said that while it acknowledged the gravity of the crimes for which Ms. Ieng Thirith was charged, she “lacks capacity to understand proceedings against her or to meaningfully participate in her own defense.”

She had appeared agitated and combative during pretrial hearings.

During a 20-minute tirade in February 2009, Ms. Ieng Thirith shouted at the judges, “Don’t accuse me of murder, otherwise you will be cursed to the seventh level of hell.”

In ordering her release, the court said prosecutors could create a mechanism to periodically monitor her health once she was free, with the possibility that she could be rearrested if her condition improved. The court said that her dementia was consistent with Alzheimer’s disease.

In a June 24 medical report to the court, a geriatric expert from New Zealand, A. John Campbell, said that she was disoriented and had difficulty with memory and that the medical workers who attended to her said she could be “bad tempered.” He said that she sometimes lost her way inside the small detention center and that she sometimes talked to herself, “usually about the past and her youth.”

Until her arrest in November 2007, she had been living in a villa in downtown Phnom Penh with her husband, Ieng Sary, 86, the former Khmer Rouge foreign minister, who is a co-defendant.

One of her lawyers, Diana Ellis, said in an e-mail that plans for Ms. Ieng Thirith’s future “have yet to be finalized.” The only conditions set by the court on Thursday were that she “refrain from interfering in the administration of justice,” including interference with potential witnesses.

Along with Mr. Ieng Sary, the remaining defendants are Nuon Chea, 85, the party’s chief ideologue, and Khieu Samphan, 80, the head of state. Pol Pot died in 1998 without being tried.

Mr. Nuon Chea also sought to be released for health reasons, claiming that he was not able to concentrate for long periods. But he was found fit to stand trial last week, according to the court spokesman, Lars Olsen.

If it proceeds, the release of Ms. Ieng Thirith will be the latest setback for the tribunal, which has been tarnished by accusations of corruption, political interference by the Cambodian government and lax oversight by the United Nations.

The tribunal has suffered delays since it began its work in 2005, along with soaring costs that are expected to reach $150 million by the end of the year.

Five members of the legal office resigned in the spring in protest over inaction by the investigating judges. Last month, one of the investigating judges, Siegfried Blunk from Germany, resigned, citing political interference by the Cambodian government.

The Open Society Justice Initiative, which is based in New York, called on the United Nations to formally investigate the accusations of judicial misconduct and political interference in the trials.

In her angry outburst in 2009, Ms. Ieng Thirith brushed aside her lawyer, who urged her to sit down, declaring, “I have never been a murderer” and blaming Mr. Nuon Chea and Duch for the killings.

Appearing distraught over the charges against her, she said: “I come from a well-bred family. My grandfather was a school principal. And my father was a school principal.”

As a young woman, Ms. Ieng Thirith was one of the most brilliant scholars of her day, along with her elder sister, Khieu Ponnary.

The sisters moved to Paris, where Khieu Ponnary studied Khmer linguistics, and Ms. Ieng Thirith, then known as Khieu Thirith, studied English literature with a focus on Shakespeare.

Ms. Khieu Thirith married and took the family name of Mr. Ieng Sary in Paris in 1951, where he was one of a group of radical Cambodian students together with Pol Pot. After returning to Cambodia, Ms. Khieu Ponnary married Pol Pot, who was several years younger than she was.

Before the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, Ms. Khieu Ponnary became mentally ill and Pol Pot later remarried. She died in 2003.

As her sister’s mind faded, Ms. Ieng Thirith became the de facto “first lady” of the revolution, according to Elizabeth Becker, one of the few Western journalists to visit the closed nation during the Khmer Rouge rule.