FRANCE 24 EXCLUSIVE
Wednesday 13 February 2008
C. Payen, FRANCE 24's correspondent in Cambodia, reports that Khieu Samphan ex-Khmer Rouge chief on genocide charges will abstain from speaking at his trial to protest administrative irregularities.
According to C. Payen, FRANCE 24's correspondent in Cambodia, Khieu Samphan, ex-Khmer Rouge chief facing genocide charges, will abstain from speaking at his trial to protest against administrative irregularities. "This is not good news for the trial", says Payen. Indeed, the Khmer Rouge trial is likely to face further delays unless the matter is resolved quickly.
Samphan's French lawyer Jacques Verges blames the Cambodian administrative machinery. He claims that proper procedures have not been observed, and deplores the unusual administrative delays. He condemns, in particular, the incomplete translation of the case files into French, which blocks the defence from obtaining all the information required.
Pol Pot number two blames outsiders for ills
PHNOM PENH, Feb 8 (Reuters) - Khmer Rouge "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea blamed foreigners on Friday for Cambodia's current ills, thereby refusing to acknowledge the legacy of Pol Pot's murderous regime at the U.N.-backed "Killing Fields" tribunal.
"My fellow Cambodians, today Cambodia is enjoying peace, solidarity and national reconciliation and its development is improving gradually," the octogenarian former guerrilla chief, charged with crimes against humanity, said at his bail hearing.
"But difficulties remain due to the influence of foreign countries that are hindering Cambodia's growth," he said without elaborating.
His only other words were in praise of Prime Minister Hun Sen, a one-eyed ex-Khmer Rouge fighter who defected to Vietnam in the late 1970s before returning with the 1979 Vietnamese invasion that ousted Pol Pot's four-year reign of terror.
An estimated 1.7 million people were executed or died of torture, disease and starvation under the ultra-Maoist regime as Pol Pot's dream of creating an agrarian peasant utopia descended into the nightmare of the "Killing Fields".
The effects of the "Year Zero" revolution and the nearly two decades of civil war that followed are still being felt 30 years later, with Cambodia one of the poorest and most heavily mined countries in Asia.
The court is expected to rule on Nuon Chea's bail request in several days. He is highly unlikely to be freed.
Besides Nuon Chea, top cadres now in custody are former President Khieu Samphan, former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith, and Duch, head of Phnom Penh's Tuol Sleng, or "S-21" interrogation and torture centre.
Pol Pot died in 1998 in the final Khmer Rouge redoubt of Anlong Veng on the Thai border.
(Reporting by Ek Madra; Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Michael Battye and Bill Tarrant)
Wednesday 13 February 2008
C. Payen, FRANCE 24's correspondent in Cambodia, reports that Khieu Samphan ex-Khmer Rouge chief on genocide charges will abstain from speaking at his trial to protest administrative irregularities.
According to C. Payen, FRANCE 24's correspondent in Cambodia, Khieu Samphan, ex-Khmer Rouge chief facing genocide charges, will abstain from speaking at his trial to protest against administrative irregularities. "This is not good news for the trial", says Payen. Indeed, the Khmer Rouge trial is likely to face further delays unless the matter is resolved quickly.
Samphan's French lawyer Jacques Verges blames the Cambodian administrative machinery. He claims that proper procedures have not been observed, and deplores the unusual administrative delays. He condemns, in particular, the incomplete translation of the case files into French, which blocks the defence from obtaining all the information required.
Pol Pot number two blames outsiders for ills
PHNOM PENH, Feb 8 (Reuters) - Khmer Rouge "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea blamed foreigners on Friday for Cambodia's current ills, thereby refusing to acknowledge the legacy of Pol Pot's murderous regime at the U.N.-backed "Killing Fields" tribunal.
"My fellow Cambodians, today Cambodia is enjoying peace, solidarity and national reconciliation and its development is improving gradually," the octogenarian former guerrilla chief, charged with crimes against humanity, said at his bail hearing.
"But difficulties remain due to the influence of foreign countries that are hindering Cambodia's growth," he said without elaborating.
His only other words were in praise of Prime Minister Hun Sen, a one-eyed ex-Khmer Rouge fighter who defected to Vietnam in the late 1970s before returning with the 1979 Vietnamese invasion that ousted Pol Pot's four-year reign of terror.
An estimated 1.7 million people were executed or died of torture, disease and starvation under the ultra-Maoist regime as Pol Pot's dream of creating an agrarian peasant utopia descended into the nightmare of the "Killing Fields".
The effects of the "Year Zero" revolution and the nearly two decades of civil war that followed are still being felt 30 years later, with Cambodia one of the poorest and most heavily mined countries in Asia.
The court is expected to rule on Nuon Chea's bail request in several days. He is highly unlikely to be freed.
Besides Nuon Chea, top cadres now in custody are former President Khieu Samphan, former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith, and Duch, head of Phnom Penh's Tuol Sleng, or "S-21" interrogation and torture centre.
Pol Pot died in 1998 in the final Khmer Rouge redoubt of Anlong Veng on the Thai border.
(Reporting by Ek Madra; Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Michael Battye and Bill Tarrant)
No comments:
Post a Comment