"November trial set for Khmer Rouge leaders" October 19, 2011|Associated Press
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Cambodia’s war crimes tribunal will begin its long-awaited full-scale trial of the top surviving leaders of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime late next month, the panel announced yesterday.
The four defendants, including the group’s chief ideologist and the No. 2 leader behind the late Pol Pot, have been indicted on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, religious persecution, homicide, and torture.
The UN-backed tribunal is seeking justice for an estimated 1.7 million people who died of starvation, exhaustion, lack of medical care, or torture during the communist Khmer Rouge’s 1970s rule.
“Many Cambodians have waited more than 30 years for this day,’’ tribunal spokesman Lars Olsen said....
There is concern that the defendants, all in their 70s or 80s and in poor health, could die before justice is done.
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Competence is also a question:
"Tribunal says Cambodian genocide defendant with Alzheimer’s unfit for trial" November 18, 2011|By ASSOCIATED PRESS
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Cambodia’s United Nations-backed tribunal yesterday ruled that a former senior Khmer Rouge leader is unfit to stand trial for genocide and other crimes because she has Alzheimer’s disease....
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Related: Trial of 3 top Khmer Rouge leaders opens
"Former Khmer Rouge leader calls atrocities during rule ‘fairy tale’" November 24, 2011|By Sopheng Cheang, Associated Press
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - A senior Khmer Rouge leader insisted yesterday that he had no real authority during the regime’s brutal rule of Cambodia and that allegations he bore responsibility for its atrocities were a “fairy tale.’’
Head of state Khieu Samphan told a tribunal he was a figurehead leader who never joined key policy meetings in the radical communist government, accused of orchestrating the “killing fields’’ and causing the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians in the 1970s.
In his rebuttal, he said the prosecutors’ opening remarks were exaggerations based mainly on unreliable old news reports and books. “You really want my head on the block,’’ he said.
After the trial of Khieu Samphan and two other top leaders opened Monday, prosecutors have described the pitiless policies the Khmer Rouge imposed in an effort to build an agrarian utopia.
The tribunal is seeking justice on behalf of the estimated quarter of Cambodia’s population who died from executions, starvation, disease, and overwork under the Khmer Rouge rule.
The defendants are the most senior surviving members of the regime: Khieu Samphan, 80; Nuon Chea, 85, the group’s number two and chief ideologist; and former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary, 86. They are charged with crimes against humanity, genocide, religious persecution, homicide, and torture, but have denied wrongdoing.
The Khmer Rouge’s supreme leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998 in Cambodia’s jungles while a prisoner of his own comrades.
Khieu Samphan stressed the nationalist credentials of the Khmer Rouge, who first opposed French colonialism, then fought against a pro-Western regime and its US backers and finally forced a showdown with neighboring Vietnam, Cambodia’s traditional enemy....
Thus you get charged with war crimes. Had they committed them in our name there would be no trial.
Prosecutors have described a litany of horrors, large and small, saying the Khmer Rouge sought to crush not just all its enemies, but the human spirit. Defense statements have lacked that emotional punch, but their emphasis on politics and history indicates that will be key to the trial.
Khieu Samphan’s French lawyer, Jacques Verges, dismissed the prosecution statements as similar to the novels of Alexandre Dumas, author “The Count of Monte Cristo’’ and “The Three Musketeers.’’
Verges has defended Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal and Nazi Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie and is noted for a slashing, sarcastic courtroom style, aimed as much at discrediting the judicial establishment as getting his clients off the hook.
Khieu Samphan, along with Verges, reminded the court that intensive US bombing of his country during the Vietnam War contributed to its misery.
I'm awaiting the numerous war crimes charges against AmeriKa from more than a dozen countries we have dropped bombs on .
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Related: Globe Court Report: Asian Exception
