Disgraced Cambodian police chief tried for shooting electricity man

The Earth times
Fri, 28 Mar 2008
Author : DPA

Phnom Penh - Disgraced former police chief Heng Pov again faced a Cambodian court Friday, this time charged with the attempted murder of a civil servant who had asked him to pay his power bill. Appearing healthy and relaxed, the former Phnom Penh police chief mocked the court, challenging it to accuse him of every murder during his six-year tenure and claiming his arrest was political and therefore his court case would not be fair.

"Charge me with shooting Piseth Pilika and Touch Srey Nich too," he told Phnom Penh Municipal Court judge Chhay Kong, whom he had unsuccessfully petitioned to have removed from his case citing bias.

Heng Pov was referring to two internationally famous female singers gunned down in separate incidents in the capital within the past decade, both allegedly for political reasons.

He has already been sentenced to decades in jail for a string of convictions, including the 2003 murder of a judge in the same court now trying him, Sok Sethamony.

In Friday's case Pov stood accused of ordering the murder of Kim Daravuth, a senior state electricity commission official, for refusing to give him free power.

He appeared without a lawyer, saying he could not afford it.

The court heard Prum Sor Phearith, the former chief of the Phnom Penh minor crimes bureau, Am Sam Kheng, aka Kong Sophal, formerly of the Interior Ministry, and Pov's confidant Hang Vuthy, aka Yumareach ('Lord of the Dead') had shot Daravuth on Pov's orders in 2005.

Daravuth took a bullet to the neck but survived, although he is now permanently disabled. He has testified that "the dispute started when (Pov) stopped paying his electricity bill."

The court reserved judgment to a date to be set. Pov and his alleged accomplices face up to 20 years in jail if convicted, although Vuthy escaped from jail in murky circumstances soon after his arrest and has not been seen since.

Pov is yet to face a number of other charges, including the 1998 attempted murder of a newspaper editor who printed an article critical of him and the execution of a Singaporean businessman.