- Title: CAMBODIA: Crunch time for Cambodia's Khmer Rouge trial.
- Date: 8th March 2007
- Summary: WOMAN STALLHOLDER OUTSIDE MUSEUM
- Embargoed: 23rd March 2007 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Cambodia
- Country: Cambodia
- Topics: Communications
- Reuters ID: LVA4JEAJ78P7QKIYG3VBQUHJ0C42
- Story Text: Cambodian and international judges hold talks this week to salvage the trial of Pol Pot's top surviving henchmen for the atrocities of the "Killing Fields". Public affairs chief for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal details the next steps towards adoption of international rules and victims express their hope for the tribunal to occur as soon as possible. Cambodian and international judges sitting on the Khmer Rouge tribunal hold crunch talks this week to salvage the trial of Pol Pot's top surviving henchmen.
At the heart of the problem is a disagreement between local and U.N.-backed officials over legalities of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, as the joint tribunal into the deaths of Khmer Rouge's estimated 1.7 million victims is called.
A week-long meeting in November to hammer out rules covering everything from the admissibility of evidence to the protection of witnesses to the height of the judges' chairs came to nothing.
Since then a separate sub-committee has discussing many of the issues but with the clock ticking on the 53 million U.S. dollar three-year trial, which officially started in July, there can be no more delays.
The meeting, which will run from March 7 to 16, "must resolve all fundamental differences", a court statement said. "The judges are also acutely aware that time is of the essence," it added.
"This week we have the meeting of the rules review committee which consists of nine judges, 5 Cambodian judges and 4 international judges, and they are meeting to look at the draft of the internal rules and we hope that during this ten-day meeting they will finalise the draft and we hope that next month we will be going into a final plenary session of all international and national judges for adoption of the international rules," Helen Jarvis, the public affairs chief for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.
Diplomats say the U.N. side of the court will walk away if they feel their local counterparts are dragging their feet or acting on the orders of Prime Minister Hun Sen, an ex-Khmer Rouge soldier who lost an eye in the battle for Phnom Penh in 1975.
Even though there is no evidence linking Hun Sen to any atrocities, his government is riddled with former cadres from the ultra-Maoist regime, many of whom will not want prosecutors raking through their pasts.
For many Cambodians, the tribunal could bring closure to long nightmare.
"I had some family killed. We want the tribunal to happen as soon as possible. We want to know the truth of what happened," said Kark Saveth, a taxi driver.
Pol Pot, the architect of the Khmer Rouge's "Year Zero" peasant revolution, died in 1998.
Around 10 of his ageing colleagues are expected to face trial, including by "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, former head of state Khieu Samphan and ex-foreign minister Ieng Sary, who are all living as free men.
Duch, head of Phnom Penh's notorious Tuol Sleng interrogation centre where at least 14,000 people are thought to have been tortured and later executed, has been in detention since 1998. yl/jrc - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2011. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None