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Cambodia tribunal charges Khmer Rouge suspect

Friday, 27 March 2015 4:42 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 27 March 2015 5:34 PM ]

The file photo shows the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), also known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, backed by the United Nations, in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.

A UN-backed court in Cambodia has charged a former cadre of the Khmer Rouge regime with crimes against humanity.

The former middle-ranking regime cadre appeared before the tribunal judge, Mark Harmon, in Cambodia’s northwestern Battambang province to hear the charges, but he was not detained, AFP quoted the court spokesman, Lars Olsen, as saying on Friday.

“The charged person is presumed innocent until proven guilty through a final judgment,” Olsen said, adding that the suspect, also known as Ao An, was expected to be formally indicted at the end of this year.

Harmon, believed to be 79, has allegedly carried out crimes at an execution site and in two security centers during the Khmer Rouge regime’s rule in the 1970s.

The ruling came weeks after Cambodia Prime Minister Hun Sen, who is also an ex-Khmer Rouge cadre, warned that further prosecutions could create unrest in the country.

In a similar move on March 3, an investigating judge at the tribunal charged Meas Muth, a former navy commander, and Im Chaem, a female former district official, with crimes against humanity.

However, the judge on the tribunal has not signed off on the charges against the latest suspects.

This handout photo taken and released by the Extraordinary Chamber in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) shows a former Khmer Rouge leader, Khieu Samphan (C), in the courtroom during a hearing in Phnom Penh, January 8, 2015. © AFP

The number of judges in the tribunal is higher than the international ones. Therefore, the possibility exists for them to turn down the decision in later stages of the judicial process.

So far the UN-backed Cambodian court, which was set up in 2006, has convicted only three people linked with the regime, including two of its most senior surviving leaders.

Former Tuol Sleng prison chief, Kaing Guek Eav, and former head of state Khieu Samphan, and Nuon Chea, a former politician and ideologist of the Khmer Rouge regime, have been sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity.

Chea and Samphan are currently facing a second trial, for genocide, murder of ethnic Vietnamese and Muslim minorities, forced marriage and rape.

The extremist policies of the Khmer Rouge in 1975-79 reportedly claimed the lives of 1.7 million people who suffered from starvation, disease and execution.

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