A California-based Cambodian rebel leader attempted to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen, seen here in January 2008, in his homeland after hatching a "Made in the USA" coup plot, a court heard Wednesday. (AFP/File)04-02-2008
LOS ANGELES (AFP)
A California-based Cambodian rebel leader attempted to overthrow the government in his homeland after hatching a "Made in the USA" coup plot, a court heard Wednesday.
Chhun Yasith, 52, listened intently as a federal prosecutors told jurors he had been the driving force behind the bloody but failed coup attempt against Prime Minister Hun Sen in Phnom Penh in November 2000.
Chhun Yasith, an accountavnt who arrived in the US in the 1980s after the collapse of the Khmer Rouge's "Killing Fields" regime, drew up plans for the overthrow from his modest office in Long Beach, southwest of Los Angeles.
"The planning and fundraising happened right here in the United States," prosecutor Lamar Baker told jurors at the US District Court of Los Angeles. "It was like the labels say, 'Made in the USA.'"
Chhun Yasith was arrested at his home in California in June 2005.
He faces four charges including conspiracy to kill in a foreign country and engaging in a military expedition against a nation with whom the United States is at peace. He could be jailed for life without parole if convicted.
Baker said Chhun Yasith had founded a group known as the Cambodian Freedom Fighters (CFF) in 1998 and was elected president after travelling to Thailand to enlist the support former Cambodian military personnel.
The CFF planned a twin-pronged strategy to bring about revolution, Baker said. The group was ordered to carry out "popcorn" attacks on soft targets such as karaoke bars, nightclubs and coffee houses before launching an all-out assault to overthrow the government.
"The defendant saw the smaller attacks as a way of using injuries and deaths to get name recognition for his group, to get people ready for revolution," Baker said. "The attacks would also divert attention away from the larger plan to overthrow the government."
After one of the so-called "popcorn" attacks -- the July 2000 bombing of a nightclub in Cambodia that left two people dead and many injured -- Chhun Yasith sent a fax to members "bragging about hospitals filling up with victims," Baker said.
Chhun Yasith selected a total of 291 targets for their ill-fated coup, codenamed "Operation Volcano."
However despite being warned by senior CFF advisors that the rebel forces were not big enough to challenge the Cambodian army and police, Chhun Yasith -- based in Thailand -- pressed ahead with the coup attempt, which took place on November 24, 2000.
Dozens of armed men stormed into Phnom Penh firing AK-47 rifles and rockets at government buildings, leaving at least four people dead, before the rebellion was quelled.
Chhun Yasith was later tried in absentia in Phnom Penh in June 2001 and convicted of conspiracy, terrorism and membership of an illegal armed group.
Opening for the defense, Chhun Yasith's attorney, Richard Callahan, argued that his client's "only goal was to bring democracy to his homeland."
"It was misguided and naive in its execution but it was not misguided and naive in its intent," Callahan said, saying his client had launched a "noble effort to save Cambodia" from the "tyrannical regime of Hun Sen."
Callahan said his client had founded the CFF after deciding that "speeches and diplomacy were not going to be enough" to unseat Hun Sen.
The trial is expected to last several weeks.
Chhun Yasith and his wife, Sras Pech, are also facing separate charges alleging they ran a fraudulent tax-preparation business. Trial in that case is scheduled to begin on July 1.
AFP
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