Cambodia condemns sentencing of its nationals by Thai court

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:05:30 GMT

By : Jurgen Schmidt

(CAAI News Media)

Phnom Penh - Cambodia plans to appeal a case in which lengthy sentences were handed down by a Thai court to a group of its nationals after they were convicted of logging and entering Thailand illegally, local media reported Thursday. The 16 men who are from adjacent provinces in north-west Cambodia were arrested on July 23 by Thai authorities. Fifteen of them were sentenced to nine years and three months each while the last was given six years and two months.

The Thai court in Ubon Ratchathani province has granted a one-month period to appeal.

The cabinet chief of Cambodia's Preah Vihear province told the Phnom Penh Post newspaper that the sentences were "revenge" by Thailand for the unresolved border dispute between the two kingdoms while Foreign Ministry spokesman Koy Kuong said government lawyers would appeal the convictions.

"Let our lawyers do their work until the end [of the legal process]; then we will use another measure," Koy Kuong told the newspaper.

Defence lawyers had pleaded that the men were not engaged in logging and had not realized they had crossed into Thai territory.

Much of the 800-kilometre-long common border between the two nations has not yet been demarcated. Tensions have been high for the past year with several soldiers on both sides killed and injured in skirmishes around the Preah Vihear temple, an 11th-century structure that sits on the border between the two kingdoms.