The speed of justice

Tom Fawthrop checks in with the ECCC.

The next case: the all-important trial of four surviving senior Khmer Rouge leaders is shrouded in doubt, given the court’s timetable and calculations that the trial not begin until mid-2011. … The court’s UN administrator, Knut Rosandhaug, has said it that the joint trial of the leaders will not be concluded before 2014 or even 2015. That seems to stack the odds even further against the surviving leaders ever facing the final verdict.

Everyone understands the need to do things properly, that legal corners cannot be cut, that international standards must be followed. But if the defendants are all dead, the court’s truckloads of meticulously crafted arguments and painstakingly culled evidence will amount to little but another heartless boot in the gut of the Cambodia people.

The evidence against the remaining four — Nuon Chea, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith– is plentiful. To borrow a quote, it’s a slam dunk case. So spare us all the legal kabuki.

In this tribunal the race against time has always been the enemy of justice. The whiff of defendants in their death throes is the hovering menace that threatens to derail justice, but it appears that the judges, the court and the UN administration, are not facing up to it. They cannot just allow things to take their normal time-consuming legalistic course and ignore the geriatric factor – the probability that one or more untimely deaths will cloud diminish and undermine the proceedings. If justice is to be realised, all sides need to recognise the need to expedite the hearings, while still respecting the rights of the accused.

From the outside, at least, the court remains un-trifled with such concerns. The law must be followed to the letter. And if the people for whom the court was created are robbed by the Grim Reaper, well, so be it.

War, death and justice

Prime Minister Hun Sen wields the specter of war as he threatens the ECCC against pursuing additional suspects.

“I prefer the failure of the tribunal than to let the country fall into war,” he said, reiterating concerns that further indictments could lead to instability. “You must consider this. If there is no peace, but it turns to war, how many people will die? It will not be the court eradicating the war. But be careful of the court making war.”

But don’t dare say he is trying to influence the court.

Justice watch

In The New York Times, Richard Bernstein takes a look at American indifference to the Khmer Rouge Tribunals and the pace of court justice. He argues that the court’s tepid progress is the result of its adherence to international standards of justice. And in regards to pending cases, he moves the opening dates even further into the future.

Bringing about the event has taken a very long time, more than a decade to decide on the composition of the tribunal and, once that was decided, more years to allow for international standards of due process to be observed — which is why the next phase of the tribunal, the one involving the highest surviving former Khmer Rouge leaders, won’t start for another two years or so — assuming that any of the aging remaining defendants live that long.

So the next case is scheduled to begin 2012 now? Murpy had no idea?

New guy at the court

The ECCC names a new international prosecutor.

Briton Andrew T. Caley, who has worked at the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has been formally appointed by Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni, a court statement said.

The appointment was welcomed by court observers, who said it was important to get a permanent international prosecutor in place as soon as possible.

‘There are many critical decisions that should be made in the (next) case in the next two months and they should be made by the international prosecutor who will have the responsibility for carrying them out,’ Heather Ryan, court monitor for the Open Society Justice Initiative, told AFP.

Welcome to the rabbit hole, Mr Caley.

The resolution of justice

In the pursuit of truth, no detail is beyond scrutiny.

Inner City Press ventured down to another UN Dispute Tribunal hearing on November 20, to find a official of the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials explaining by video conference that a staffer working on audio visual production for UNAKRT had been underperforming. Or was it that the equipment bought by UNAKRT — already embroiled in corruption allegations — was of the wrong kind?

Somewhere, deep in the halls of the Extraordinary Chambers, under the weight of 2 million dead souls and twice as many living, the bureaucrats are debating with profound gravitas the moral implications of NTSC v PAL.

Prosecutor seeks 40-year sentence for Duch

The BBC reports.

Former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav should be jailed for 40 years, a prosecutor has told Cambodia’s UN-backed war crimes court.

Kaing, known as Comrade Duch, has admitted responsibility and apologised for overseeing the deaths of 15,000 people at Tuol Sleng prison.

To anyone with an American-frontier sense of justice, 40 years sounds like the kind of sentence someone gets for nicking a candy bar from the local Quick-E Mart.

Dudley Wayne Kyzer, for example, was sentenced by an Alabama court to 10,000 years in prison for killing his wife and two others. Oklahoma rapist Darron Bennalford Anderson was handed 2,200 years, and upon retrial dealt another 90 centuries, “including 4000 years each for rape and sodomy, 1,750 years for kidnaping, 1,000 years for burglary and robbery, and 500 years for grand larceny.”

Duch methodically orchestrated the torture and execution of more than 15,000 people. Forty life sentences would be a relative slap on the wrist. Forty years is practically an admission of innocence.

 

Gov’t to KRT defendants: Drop dead

Tribunal watch dog OSJI offers mixed praise for the Extraordinary Chambers. From today’s Cambodia Daily:

In a periodic report on the court’s activities that was due to be released in New York yesterday evening, the Open Society Justice Initiative also said UN and the Cambodian government had made no progress to enforce a new anticorruption program that both sides at the court agreed to in August.

… In the report, OSJI described the concluding trial of crimes against humanity suspect Kaing Guek Eav as a “major achievement,” which though imperfect, proved that the tribunal is technically and physically able to conduct a complex procedure meeting international fair trial standards.

Still, OSJI reasserts its stance that the court is not independent. Citing public speeches of the prime minister, OSJI says that Hun Sen continues to cast his influence over the court. Citing confidential sources, the group says the government refuses to allow investigation of additional suspects.

According to insiders, however, the white elephant in the room is the tribunal’s empty 2010 calendar. The court’s next trial is not expected to began until 2011, at the earliest. No one at the chambers can give a reasonable explanation for this laggardly approach,  and cynics darkly suggest that the court and the government are stalling in hopes that the four remaining defendants all drop dead.

If Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan all died in the next year, that not only would be incredibly unfortunate, it also would be incredibly suspicious. Surely there’s a less murderous explanation for the delay. So why isn’t anyone making it?

Cruel Him

Elena Lesley talks to Him Huy, a jailer at S-21 in the 70s.

Him Huy asks us to come upstairs and we climb a ladder into the house’s only room. As we sit on a new straw mat, he offers us tea and warm corn cakes. Immediately Him Huy strikes me as a charismatic person. He jokes with Huy Vannak about the court-issued jacket he wore to testify and when he laughs, the network of fault lines on his face crinkles into an all-consuming smile.

His demeanour becomes far more somber, however, when we start discussing Duch and S-21. Him Huy says he never wanted to join the Khmer Rouge, but because he came from an area that supported the guerilla movement, he had no choice. He left home to fight when he was around sixteen and tried to run away several times. Like a schoolboy, he says he even faked illness and fabricated family problems because he missed his mom and her homemade Khmer cupcakes.

Although his superiors told him and other young troops they were ‘fighting imperialist forces,’ Him Huy says he never understood Khmer Rouge ideology.

‘I was too young to understand,’ he says. ‘I asked, “What are imperialists? What is capitalism?” And they told us, “They are the groups that make the difference between rich and poor.”

Far from demons, most Khmer Rouge killers were just everyday people trapped in a dissolute chapter of history.

Him Huy walks us down the dirt path back to our car and thanks us for coming. He stands at the highway’s edge, smiling and waving, as we begin the drive back to Phnom Penh. In so many ways, he is completely unremarkable. If he hadn’t been a certain age at a certain time in an area of Cambodia that supported the Khmer Rouge, he probably would have never become a killer.

As humans, survival is hard-coded into our DNA. Faced with live-or-die choices, no one should be surprised by those who choose life.

This is why, as [Theary] Seng says, we should approach our judgments of former Khmers Rouge with ‘a sense of humility. If we had been in their position, maybe we would have done the same thing.’

Or died trying.

The court calls Chea Sim

The ECCC wants to talk with Chea Sim.

CAMBODIAN’S UN-backed Khmer Rouge war crimes court has summoned six top government and legislative officials as witnesses against leaders of the late 1970s regime, said documents released on Wednesday.

… Current senate president Chea Sim, national assembly president Heng Samrin, foreign minister Hor Namhong, finance minister Keat Chhon and senators Sim Ka and Ouk Bunchhoeun were each ‘asked for a hearing as a witness,’ said the letters.

… ‘Except for individuals who volunteer to go, the government’s position is no to this even if they are called as witnesses,’ government spokesman Khieu Kanharith told AFP on Wednesday.

He said that foreign officials involved in the tribunal ‘can pack their clothes and return home’ if they are not satisfied.

It’s not clear why the government is so hell-bent on obstructing justice. Chea Sim and his peers are being called as witnesses only. And if they have nothing to hide, as the government so adamantly insists, then there is nothing for any of them to worry about. Right?

Paranoid

Prime Minister Hun Sen is frightened of another civil war, and he wants you to be frightened too.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen renewed his criticism of the country’s U.N.-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal Monday, warning that arresting more suspects could spark civil war.

Hun Sen spoke in response to last week’s ruling by the tribunal allowing prosecutors to pursue further arrests. The matter had been in contention because the Cambodian co-prosecutor opposed the idea, while his international counterpart supported it. …

“I would like to tell you that if you prosecute (more leaders) without thinking beforehand about national reconciliation and peace, and if war breaks out again and kills 20,000 or 30,000 people, who will responsible?” Hun Sen said.

The arrest of Ieng Sary did not spark an uprising, so the specter of troops amassing for a commander of lesser rank seems a bit paranoid, really. Or manufactured. Considering the source, though, it’s hard to say which.

Civil war coming

AFP has the scoop:

Cambodia’s UN-backed war crimes court announced Wednesday that it would investigate more suspects from the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, blamed for the deaths of up to two million people.

“The international prosecutor is authorised to make an introductory submission to co-investigating judges to open additional judicial investigations,” court spokesman Lars Olsen told AFP.

Based on the investigations, the tribunal will have to decide whether to prosecute these suspects, a move that Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has strongly opposed on the grounds that it would spark civil war.

This is good news for the tribunal. The move to try more suspects, in spite of the prime minister’s dire prediction, proves the court enjoys some real autonomy. Until today that was not at all clear.

Court farce

In the Wall Street Journal today, Dr. Sophal Ear unloads on the ECCC.

I can no longer in good conscience sit back in silence and watch this theater of the absurd. … The latest news came on August 11, when Uth Chhorn was named to the court as an independent counselor. Mr. Chhorn is Cambodia’s auditor-general and heads the seven-year-old National Audit Authority, which is supposed to audit the government’s activities. It has yet to make a single report public.

This news is only the most recent window-dressing in the Tribunal’s brief history. In February 2007, a kickback scheme was exposed by the George Soros-funded Open Society Justice Initiative. Two years and seven international investigations later, basic questions of accountability remain unanswered. The Cambodian authorities have stonewalled and denied wrongdoing.

Mr Ear takes aim at the resignation of Keat Bophal, and the appointment of Helen Jarvis as the head of the victims unit. He lambastes the way the tribunal has handled public testimony, calling the recent exchanges a “comedy of errors.”

And yet little old ladies in far-clung villages still wake up at midnight and make the six-hour journey into the capital, hoping to catch a glimpse of the world’s million-dollar farce. Why? Because their pain is so great, their souls so fractured, that they are desperate for relief, however fleeting. About these people the men in government do not care. They think only of how much money they can steal.

Court gossip

Stephanie Giry has a terrific article up at the Pulitzer Center about Jacques Vergès, the lawyer of Khieu Samphan. Nearly 7,000 words, the story is mostly about Vergès’ storied legal career. But there’s a bit of court gossip near the end. A bombshell, really.

Long accused of being too slow – only one of the five defendants, Duch, the commander of the S-21 torture centre, is on trial – more recently it had been hampered by budget shortages, corruption charges, and a disagreement among the prosecutors about whether to indict more surviving Khmer Rouge leaders, including a few who sit in the current Cambodian government.

Including a few who sit in the current Cambodian government? That’s preposterous. The Khmer Rouge has been studied to death. No one has ever found credible evidence to suggest that anyone currently serving the government is in jeopardy of being charged by the ECCC. To imply such is willfully misleading. Just stop it.

Spreading the news

Writing in the Boston Globe, Joshua Kurlantzick wonders about the effectiveness of international war crimes tribunals. In general, Kurlantzick points to a host of institutional problems that weigh on all tribunals. In specific, he points to weaknesses in the ECCC’s public affairs game.

The stakes for Cambodia are high. … But there is good reason to believe the tribunal will fail in its aims. Held 30 years after the fall of the regime, the trial focuses on only five leaders – Khmer Rouge head Pol Pot died a decade ago – leaving thousands of former Khmer Rouge officials living undisturbed in Cambodian society. And though it may reveal important information about the country’s past, virtually no one in Cambodia will have access to its findings. … In Cambodia, only a small percentage of people actually can follow the proceedings, which get little coverage on national television.

Court critics have long pointed to shortcomings in the ECCC’s public affairs efforts, which until recently had been woefully anemic. But things are getting better, reports Elena.

[T]he atmosphere at the court itself has changed considerably in recent months. I’ve mentioned this before, but because the difference is so striking, I recently interviewed newly appointed Public Affairs head Reach Sambath about his office’s outreach efforts. Since he took over his new role in June, hearings have gone from generally sparsely attended events (often with only a couple dozen people staying for afternoon sessions), to overflow audiences. …

“We are implanting the legal system in their brains,” Sambath said. Numerous villagers have called to tell him that, after seeing the court, they have been following proceedings closely on TV and radio. Some even ask to come back. One village has visited three times so far, Sambath said, laughing.

Catharsis and the Khmer Rouge Tribunals

Look around you, talk to anyone, and it’s easy to see that Cambodia remains haunted by its past. Will the Khmer Rouge Tribunals help put those old demons to rest? Or just inflame long-buried memories?

A new study offers insight, but sustains the paradox: more than 75 percent of Cambodians believe the Khmer Rouge trials, formally called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, will provide justice and promote reconciliation, but more than 87 percent of people old enough to remember the torture and murder during the Khmer Rouge era say the trials will rekindle “painful memories.”

“Cambodians have high hopes that the Khmer Rouge trials will deliver justice. However, they also have great fears of revisiting the past,” says Jeffrey Sonis, M.D., M.P.H., an associate professor in the departments of Social Medicine and Family Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, lead author of the study that appears in the Aug. 6 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“We just don’t know how tribunals affect a society, whether they increase mental and physical disabilities or relieve them,” Sonis says.

From Science Daily.

Catharsis and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

Justice is boring

Witnesses at the Extraordinary Courts are starting to bore people. Apparently, their stories are all the same.

For several days, Duch’s trial has been sluggish and dull. Journalists have tended to abandon the tribunal’s media room. The witnesses, all former S-21 staff members, have succeeded at the stand, or their testimonies have been read in court. It has been more or less the same tune. François Roux, Duch’s international co-lawyer, protested the situation on Wednesday August 5th. He called for a selection of the testimonies read on the basis of their relevance for the debates, at this already advanced stage of the trial.

The evidence against Duch is overwhelming, and there would appear no forensic need to hear the same stories from 25 different people — so the request makes sense. At the same time, however, it’s worth remembering that the court was conceived not only to pass judgment against Khmer Rouge leaders, but to bear witness against their atrocities. While hearing from every last witness may not be judicially expedient, robbing the country of a full public accounting hardly seems like a judicious response.

Bastard, part two

The AP has more on Nil Nonn.

Norng Chan Phal testified at the trial of prison commander Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch (pronounced DOIK), that his father was first taken away to the prison, and that he was later taken there with his brother and mother, whom he glimpsed behind bars one last time before she disappeared, and presumably was executed.

“I could see her on the second floor, holding her hands on the bars of the window, looking at me, and she did not say even a single word to us,” Norng Chan Phal said.

He broke down weeping several times while speaking of his parents, prompting his lawyer to ask for a five- minute recess so he could compose himself. Chief Judge Nil Nonn urged him to be strong and carry on and said his testimony was the best chance for him to share the story of his parents and his suffering.

Subhuman.

Heartless bastard

Tuol Sleng survivors Vann Nath, Chum Mey, and Bou Meng have all testified at The ECCC this week. Each man has given tearful testimony of losing family members and being tortured. AFP reports:

“My wife and I put our hands behind our backs, and then they cut our hands. Then my wife cried and said, ‘What did we do wrong? We are both orphans,’” Bou Meng told the court.

The couple were then blindfolded with black cloth, Bou Meng said, and he realised they were being sent to prison as they were taken to be photographed.

“That (Tuol Sleng photo) is the only photograph I have of my wife with me today,” Bou Meng said

Bethany Lindsay at The Cambodia Daily reports that such testimony left Trial Chamber President Nil Nonn, the self-confessed crooked judge from Battambang (warning: pdf), perturbed at the time wasted on tears.

At one point, Trial Chamber President Nil Nonn told Mr Meng to make better use of the one day allotted for his testimony. “Please try to recompose yourself. This is a day you have been waiting for, for so long.”

… Chum Mey broke down in tears several times … He was instructed by Judge Nonn to “recompose” himself.

Before testimony began on Wednesday, civil party lawyer Silke Studzinsky, who represents both Mr Mey and Mr Meng, suggested that the court should be more sympathetic toward witnesses.

“I would like that the chamber gives information to the witness at the beginning, that if they need time to cope with their emotions that they get this time,” Ms Studzinsky said.

Judge Nonn told her that it was the reesponsibility of the civil party lawyers to monitor the emotional well-being of their clients. He also cautioned that very long breaks should not be taken, because: “It could affect the schedule of the proceedings.”

Such a callous disregard for a witnesses’ emotional state seems part of a more disturbing, though not at all unexpected, trend. After Tuesday’s hearings, Stephanie Gee at Ka-set noted sharply:

Tuesday June 30th, Chum Mey, a prisoner who was tortured in S-21 and joined as a civil party in Duch’s trial, was able at last to share his story with the public, but was treated, on too many instances, without the signs of respect that never failed to be shown to the accused.

Judge Nonn, it appears, sold his heart as well as his soul to the CPP.

http://www.forum-asia.org/news/press_releases/fa/pdfs/Khmer%20Rouge%20Tribunal,%20After%20Over%20a%20Quarter%20Century.pdf

ECCC co-prosecutor Robert Petit bids adieu

Back in September 2006, when the ECCC was still in its early stages, co-prosecutor Robert Petit answered a question about the court’s ability to meet international standards with this:

“I’m going to go home if I can’t do my job right,” he said.

Today, three years and a single defendant later, Mr Petit announced his resignation.

The Canadian prosecutor at the genocide tribunal trying Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge announced Tuesday he is resigning, citing personal and family reasons.

Robert Petit said in a statement that his resignation will become effective September 1, three years after he joined the United Nations-backed tribunal, which is currently holding its first trial.

“It has been the greatest privilege of my career to have the opportunity to bring some justice to the victims of the crimes of the Khmer Rouge,” Petit said.

POSTSCRIPT: Elena has posted the complete statement, and concludes wryly:

Although Petit has never been particularly warm with press, most journalists covering the court consider him a person of integrity and purpose.

Nayan Chanda testifies at KRT

From Ka-set.

Nayan Chanda, author of Brother Enemy: The War After the War (1986) and long-time Indochina correspondent for the prestigious Far Eastern Economic Review, started his testimony on Monday May 25th at Duch’s trial to discuss the armed conflict pitting Democratic Kampuchea against Vietnam. The journalist, currently director of publications at a research institute of U.S. university Yale, had access to officials of the Indochina peninsula, although he was unable to go to Democratic Kampuchea, and was able to understand the political, diplomatic and military issues for the enemy brothers. His testimony, based upon his book Brother Enemy, shed new light on the argument often used by former Khmer Rouge officials to justify their past actions, that is the existence of real expansionist intentions from the Vietnamese neighbour.

POSTSCRIPT: Duch responds.

Sean ‘The Bagman’ Visoth

VIA Elena: CNN investigates allegations of corruption at the E-triple-C.

Thirty years on, five Khmer Rouge leaders are in court facing the most serious charges imaginable, but both defence and prosecution lawyers tell Rivers that the credibility of the UN-backed war crimes tribunal is being jeopardized by the corruption allegations.

While there are no suggestions the judges or lawyers are involved, employees of the court’s Office of Administration described pressure to to provide kickbacks to supervisors to keep their jobs. The employees say the combined amounts of the kickbacks were large: “Thousand dollars. 30 or 40 thousand US dollars a month.”

The Chief of Defence Section of the trial, Richard Rogers, adds: “It (the trial collapsing) is becoming a real possibility…the victims who’ve been waiting for 30 years for these trials deserve justice…peace…closure.” The UN’s internal affairs body confirmed to CNN it has investigated the alleged corruption in the court administration, but would not share the results of the investigation.  The Cambodian government also confirmed an investigation, but says no evidence of corruption was found.

So, $30,000 to $40,000 per month went to Sean Visoth. That’s not a bad little monthly stipend. Of course, the chances he got to keep that money are quite small. Most of that it went straight up the power chain. It always does. The thing is, Sean Visoth is the highest ranking Cambodian administrator at the court, which makes the list of names above him singularly brief: Sok An.

And it’s not as if Sok An needs the money. He’s already wealthy beyond the imagination of most Cambodians. It’s like Warren Buffet filching nickels from the homeless.

Duch refutes waterboarding charge

Duch says he never waterboarded anyone.

The former Khmer Rouge prison chief on Wednesday denied he waterboarded or suffocated detainees as he detailed his torture techniques to Cambodia’s UN-backed war crimes trial.

… [H]e said he had not used the simulated drowning technique called waterboarding, and had not put plastic bags over prisoners’ heads because of the danger they could suffocate to death.

“The kind of waterboarding technique was not employed and the plastic bag was also not a kind of technique,” Duch said.

… “There were two techniques. The normal beating technique and the electrocution technique with use of a telephone (line)… which was connected to an electric current to electrocute prisoners. That was true,” Duch said.

If Duch never used a waterboard, then where did the paintings at Tuol Sleng come from? Someone should ask Vann Nath.

KRT latest

Stan has it.

Quote of the day

From professor John Hall, talking to Seth Mydans of the New York Times:

“My greatest fear is that the tribunal will simply fade away from lack of funding — with the donors reluctant to fund a tribunal unable or unwilling to address the allegations,” said John A. Hall, a professor at the Chapman University School of Law in Orange, California, who has been monitoring the trials.

“In terms of what is happening inside the courtroom, this is an amazingly exciting time,” he said. But he added: “We shouldn’t pretend that progress can continue unless the corruption issue is dealt with.”

Prime Minister Hun Sen recently stated publicly what he has been saying privately for weeks: he would prefer to see the tribunal fail. Professor Hall’s comment may be more prescient than it first appears.

Background: Duch

Ka-set peers into Duch’s past.

Duch’s interest in the Marxist-Leninist revolution dates back to 1964, he explained, i.e. when he was a student at the National Institute of Pedagogy, where two of his teachers aroused his interest in politics. “My commitment was whole-hearted. I sacrifice everything”: a great part of his salary and even regular visits to his parents… Late 1967, after attending a training course provided by the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), he was made to swear allegiance to the party, in order “to serve the party and the people in the best way, all his life, and to sacrifice everything” for the revolutionary cause. A few weeks later, he was arrested by Prince Sihanouk’s judicial police for “having endangered the security of the state”, with the collaboration of a foreign power. He was sentenced to 20 years of hard labour and was released on April 3rd 1970 thanks to General Lon Nol’s coup, which resulted in the release of all political prisoners.

The whole thing is worth reading.

KRT corruption: The Economist names names

In the most direct language to appear in the press yet, The Economist names officials accused of taking kickbacks at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.

Three of the court’s staff, who spoke on condition of anonymity, accuse Sean Visoth, the court’s chief of administration, of collecting money from every Cambodian in his department, including court employees and Cambodian legal assistants in the office of the co-investigating judges and co-prosecutors (the court has dual officials because it is was set up under Cambodian and United Nations auspices and is run under national and UN rules). Some of the cash, they were told, was intended for Sok An, a deputy prime minister.

There is no indication that the minister took the money and neither man has commented on the accusations, which are unproven. But in November Sean Visoth went on sick leave because, according to the government’s spokesman Khieu Kanharith, a UN corruption review had named him and requested his removal. “Sick leave is a political excuse,” he says

It’s a bit of a pickle for the U.N.

Lawyers for the defence are demanding a full investigation. On March 27th the defence team for Nuon Chea, another of the accused, backed by two other defence teams, asked to see the confidential UN review. “At some point,” says Richard Rogers, the co-ordinator for the defence lawyers, the UN “is going to have to choose between either looking like it’s complicit in a cover-up or hand over the documents to the defence teams so they can help ensure international standards.”

Rather than deal with the situation like an adult, the government continues to respond with callow dismissals.

“Why don’t all the lawyers pull out?” asks its spokesman. “If you say that the court is corrupt, get out. At least we can save some money.”

It’s like working with drunk teenagers.

Duch complains of poor conditions

The peculiar ways of justice.

Attorneys for accused Cambodian war criminal and Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, say their client deserves more freedoms in jail.

Apparently, Duch is unhappy with his detention facilities. He’s sorry, and he wants to go home now.

Twenty is too many, says PM

Prime Minister Hun Sen speaks out about the number of defendants the ECCC should try.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen warned Tuesday that putting more Khmer Rouge cadres on trial for crimes committed during Pol Pot’s 1975-79 reign of terror could plunge the country back into civil war.

“I would prefer to see this tribunal fail instead of seeing war return to my country,” Hun Sen, himself a former Khmer Rouge commander, said a day after the joint U.N.-Cambodian court resumed its trial of Pol Pot’s chief torturer.

[...]

“If as many as 20 Khmer Rouge are indicted to stand trial and war returns to Cambodia, who will be responsible for that?,” he told the audience.

20? Why 20? That’s leaving it rather broad isn’t it? Nobody is talking about trying 20 suspects. Five are already in the dock, plus there’s talk about arresting perhaps another six. That makes 11. Well short of 20.

If you were just taking a wild shot at reading the tea leaves, it seems that Hun Sen is holding out the option for further arrests.

POSTSCRIPT: Yes. The headline on the story does say “Cambodia PM rejects wider Khmer Rouge trials.” But the actual story doesn’t quite make that case. Going on the actual quotes, Hun Sen doesn’t explicitly rule out more prosecutions. He just says that 20 is too many. No?

Duch goes on trial

Everyone has the story:

• Trials of Khmer Rouge Officials Begin [NYT]
• Cambodia’s Day in Court [RFA]
• “Killing Fields” torturer on trial in Cambodia [Reuters]
• Court hears Khmer Rouge testimony [BBC]
• Former Khmer Rouge leader goes on trial in Cambodia [CNN]
• Khmer Rouge prison chief faces war crimes trial [AFP]
• Long-delayed Khmer Rouge genocide trial to begin [AP]

Government rails at foreign side of KRT

Minister of Information says overpriced foreigners are sand-bagging.

Minister of Information Khieu Kanharith told the Post after speaking on a local radio station Wednesday that the tribunal should “just go ahead with the first few [trials] to show that [the court] is working”.

“Because [foreign judges] have a lot of money, they can afford to drag their feet…. The longer they drag their feet, the more money they get,” he said.

“Every day it’s another issue. It’s unacceptable…. The most important thing is just to start…. We cannot please them all the time,” he added.

The ECCC is officially a mess.