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

In light of the HISTORIC (!) start of MOST COMPLEX (sic!) trial hearings beginning on 27 June 2011 and again ANOTHER HISTORIC (!) START of this same MOST COMPLEX (sic!) on 21 Nov. 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 the basic 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 (sic!) arguments over the criminal charges (e.g. genocide, crimes against humanity, penal code of 1956 - sic!).  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

 Steung Tauch Execution Site

 

The Specific Case of Prey Tumnob ("Bos") Village

727. There is very precise testimony of the execution of a large part of the population of Prey Tumnob Village (also known as "Bos" or "Bo" village, Doun Tei Subdistrict, Ponhea Krek District) at Steung Tauch in June 1978.³¹²¹ Numerous surviving witnesses confirm that hundreds at villagers were taken there and killed in one night.³¹²² One survivor provided investigators with a list, from memory, of the names, ages and positions of 140 people transported to Steung Tauch, noting that "the people on the trucks consisted of all categories, such as collective cadres, civilians, children, old people, the chief of the Subdistrict ([REDACTED))... but there were not any soldiers".³¹²³

728. This, significantly more severe treatment, compared with other villages in the area, may be explained by the close relationship between purged East Zone Secretary Sao Phim and the village of Prey Tumnob.³¹²⁴ One survivor of the massacre, corroborated by other witnesses, relates how, as they were getting off the trucks at Steung Tauch, their guards said "all of you are the contemptible Phim's children"'.³¹²⁵

729. The witnesses describe the chain of events as follows. One day, a group of around ten soldiers wearing black uniforms, silk scarves and cloth caps³¹²⁶ arrived in Bos Village with three or four large military trucks. The Bos Village committee chairman called a meeting at the village school compound. The inhabitants were told that "upper Angkar" wanted them to move to Suong, on Route 7 to the west of Ponhea Krek, where there were concrete houses, to work in the rubber plantation.³¹²⁹ They were told to bring just the clothes they were wearing, without any dishes or mats.³¹³⁰

 

730. The inhabitants then returned home to collect their families, and children working in the fields were brought in by the soldiers.³¹³¹ Around 4pm that day, women, men, families, the young and the old were brought together herded under armed supervision onto the military trucks, with a capacity estimated at between 30 and 40 persons each, (there was not enough room for the entire population).³¹³² However, the trucks did not go to the announced destination, instead turning east along Route 7, via Kandaol Chrum and Ta Hiev Kraom villages.³¹³³

731. The trucks had CPK military guards, one cadre armed with an automatic rifle riding in the back of the truck to guard the occupants, whilst others rode in the cab. Witnesses make no mention of having been shackled or subjected to any violence during transfer.³¹³⁴

732. Upon arrival at Steung Tauch, at around 6pm, the trucks stopped by the side of the road and a group of soldiers came out of the jungle.³¹³⁵ The soldiers cocked their guns and ordered the people to get off the trucks, tied their arms behind their backs, with krama and used hammock ropes to tie the arms of five people together at a time.³¹³⁶ The men were segregated from the women and children.³¹³⁷ An old man with mental problems who argued with the soldiers was hit on his forehead with a gun butt and died.³¹³⁸

733.            The men were taken away for execution first,³¹³⁹ about 50-60 metres from the road, south of the present Kak Subdistrict police station.³¹⁴⁰ Two of the eleven survivors are direct eyewitnesses to the killings.³¹⁴¹ Once inside the forest, the men were ordered to halt. Then, one person at a time, they were separated from their ropes and brought to a pit that had already been prepared, possibly in an old B-52 crater.³¹⁴² One survivor explains that " [t]wo soldiers escorted an individual with his arms tied with a scarf, one at a time, to the edge of the pit, where rifles were pointed at each individual's ears with a warning not to shout or try to escape. The soldiers simultaneously hit each individual with wooden poles into the pit".³¹⁴³ Another survivor, who was in line to be executed and witnessed numerous killings during the night, corroborates and provides further details: after having been hit and pushed into the pit "If they saw any victim still moved, they stabbed him more with a bayonet of the CKC rifle"³¹⁴⁴ Other witnesses who could not see the pit from where they were being held, recall hearing the sounds of striking blows and the screaming of victims³¹⁴⁵ and stated that the troops collected victims' clothing³¹⁴⁶

734.            One survivor recalls that, when his turn came, he was given a blow to the back of the head and over the left eyebrow,³¹⁴⁷ before falling onto eight or ten dead bodies already in the pit. Thinking the victim was dead, the guards climbed down into the hole to untie the scarf.³¹⁴⁸ Some time later, when his pit was full, the witness managed to slip out from under the bodies that had been piled on top of him and hide.³¹⁴⁹ After daylight, he fled through a number of villages looking for refuge. During his flight, he warned a number of local officials about the executions. He discovered from the population of these villages that the military was planning to transfer the population of Ponley, another Sao Phim model village in Kak Subdistrict, and so ran to warn them to flee, before escaping to the forest and, some months later, to Vietnam.³¹⁵⁰ Witnesses from Ponley Village confirm that they met the survivor when he came to warn them, then fled also.³¹⁵¹

735.            The women and children, who had been waiting near the road throughout the night, were bound together in turn and taken into the forest to be executed.³¹⁵² However, one woman and her family, totaling ten people, five of whom were interviewed during the judicial investigation,³¹⁵³ were reprieved because she convinced the executioners that her son was a "Centre" soldier. In the morning, her family was transferred by truck to the "Mai Sak" office (near the Route 7 junction) and kept there for five days while their story was verified with Centre commanders (apparently including one named "Pork"), before being sent to a cooperative.

736.           Witnesses estimate the number of people transferred by truck from Prey Tumnob to Steung Tauch that day at between 160 and 300 people.³¹⁵⁵ All agree that among the people transferred, there were only ten or eleven survivors.³¹⁵⁶ One witness believes that, after the news was leaked that the population was not being transported to Suong, the remaining people in Bos Village fled to the forest and a second rotation of trucks that returned to Steung Tauch in the morning was nearly empty.³¹⁵⁷