I am waiting to see if KRT will plan to arrest 3 more KR officials!
The international community has urged the co-judges and the co-prosecutors to revise laws and evidence in order to indict 3 other former senior Khmer Rouge officials.
Up to now, five former Khmer Rouge leaders have been detained pending trial. They include: Ieng Sary former deputy Prime Minister and foreign minister; Khieu Samphan, former chairman of State Presidium; Nuon Chea, former president of People’s Representative Assembly; Ieng Thirith, former minister for health and social actions; and Kaing Guek Eav, a.k.a. Duch, former chief of Tuol Sleng prison, known as S-21 torture center.
However, in the Khmer Rouge tribunal’s compound, eight detention cells have been built, and five of them have been occupied.
An unofficial source said that the 3 former Khmer Rouge leaders to be charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes are the military officers who are currently serving in the Cambodian Royal Armed Forces after their integration with Phnom Penh Government in 1996.
Civil society organizations’ officials deem the plan to arrest 3 more senior Khmer Rouge leaders not important because they think the tribunal should try the five Khmer Rouge detainees very soon in order to give justice to Cambodian victims and indicate justice to almost 2 million Cambodians who died during the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror.
Is Ieng Thirith Really Mentally ill?
The former Khmer Rouge leader whose health is fragile and who is mentally ill could threaten the trial in the Khmer Rouge court, according to a lawyer for the accused.
Pat Pov Seang told Phnom Penh Post Wednesday last week that he had seen Thai doctors’ documents and that it claimed that his client, Ieng Thirith, former Democratic Kampuchea Social Actions minister, had a metal problem, which she could not appear in the trial. Both Ieng Thirith and her husband, former DK Foreign Minister Ieng Sary, had been to Thailand regularly to have their illnesses treated, before their arrest in November last year.
Pat Pov Seang said that if the judges conform to the law, she (Ieng Thirith) should be released since they could not punish those with mental illnesses.
Her family members who had visited her in the detention center in the Khmer Rouge tribunal said similarly that she was seriously ill and should be released. “She is ill, so she should not be kept under detention,” Phnom Penh Post quoted Seng Rorn, Ieng Thirith’s son-in-law, as saying. He, however, said that it depended on the lawyers and the judges to decide whether or not she should be remanded on bail.
So far, the former Khmer Rouge top leaders are becoming old and ailing. For example, Pol Pot has passed away without going through this public and formal trial. Obviously, people think that all the detained former top KR leaders were behind the Khmer Rouge regime which killed 1.7 million Cambodians. As a result, many people besides the dead have been victimized and living through trauma, just like mentally ill people. Who should be held responsible for this?
People just need justice, not anther victim to appear at all. If the ECCC did not try to accelerate the trial process more quickly, would all the former KR top leaders claim that they themselves are too aging to be tried or some kind of excuse?
Co-Prosecutors Asks Co-Investigating Judges to Expand Investigation
After collecting information and evidence from victims and a Human Rights organization, the co-prosecutors of the Khmer Rouge tribunal decided [Wednesday] last week to request the co-investigating judges to make a further investigation of their Supplementary Submission. The Co-Investigating Judges are asked to investigate allegations of crimes committed at Security Centres where many Cambodians were allegedly tortured, forced to overwork and executed between 1975 and 1979. Read the rest of this entry »