Khem Ngun was allegedly the one who ordered the shooting of the Briton and his translatorPHNOM PENH (AFP) — Five former Khmer Rouge fighters went on trial Friday for the 1996 kidnapping and killing of a British mine clearer and his Cambodian translator.
The former guerrillas have been charged with premeditated murder and illegal confinement, and could face life in prison if convicted.
They stand accused of shooting Christopher Howes and translator Huon Huot a few days after seizing the pair and other members of their mine clearance team near the famed Angkor Wat temples in northwest Cambodia.
All five suspects -- Khem Ngun, Puth Lim, Sin Dorn, Loch Mao, and Cheap Chet -- were arrested over the past year.
Khem Ngun, who served under the notorious Khmer Rouge commander Ta Mok, was allegedly the one who ordered the fighters under his control to shoot Howes and Huon Huot.
Khem Ngun was serving as a major general in the Cambodian military when he was arrested in November last year. The other suspects had become civil servants.
At the time of the killings, the communist Khmer Rouge were battling government troops in the final years of Cambodia's drawn-out civil war.
Howes, 37, refused a chance to leave his kidnapped team of 20 deminers from the Britain-based Mines Advisory Group to retrieve a ransom.
While the rest of the team was eventually released, Howes and Huon Huot were taken deeper into rebel-held territory and killed.
Their remains were found in 1998, the same year Cambodia's civil war ended when the Khmer Rouge movement disintegrated.
Cambodia is littered with millions of land mines and other unexploded ordnance from nearly three decades of conflict.
The former guerrillas have been charged with premeditated murder and illegal confinement, and could face life in prison if convicted.
They stand accused of shooting Christopher Howes and translator Huon Huot a few days after seizing the pair and other members of their mine clearance team near the famed Angkor Wat temples in northwest Cambodia.
All five suspects -- Khem Ngun, Puth Lim, Sin Dorn, Loch Mao, and Cheap Chet -- were arrested over the past year.
Khem Ngun, who served under the notorious Khmer Rouge commander Ta Mok, was allegedly the one who ordered the fighters under his control to shoot Howes and Huon Huot.
Khem Ngun was serving as a major general in the Cambodian military when he was arrested in November last year. The other suspects had become civil servants.
At the time of the killings, the communist Khmer Rouge were battling government troops in the final years of Cambodia's drawn-out civil war.
Howes, 37, refused a chance to leave his kidnapped team of 20 deminers from the Britain-based Mines Advisory Group to retrieve a ransom.
While the rest of the team was eventually released, Howes and Huon Huot were taken deeper into rebel-held territory and killed.
Their remains were found in 1998, the same year Cambodia's civil war ended when the Khmer Rouge movement disintegrated.
Cambodia is littered with millions of land mines and other unexploded ordnance from nearly three decades of conflict.
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