KRouge leader Pol Pot 'not a Cambodian patriot'

KRouge leader Pol Pot 'not a Cambodian patriot'


PHNOM PENH (AFP) — The former Khmer Rouge prison chief told Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes trial on Tuesday that the regime leader Pol Pot "had blood on his hands" as he pitted his country against neighbouring Vietnam.

"I did not think of Pol Pot as a patriot. He had blood on his hands. Pol Pot used the slogan that if we wanted to defeat the Vietnamese we had to be clean in our ranks and clean in ourselves," Duch told the court.

Duch is accused of overseeing the torture and extermination of some 15,000 people who passed through the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, also known as S-21, during the late 1970s regime.

"In that conflict Pol Pot was a murderer, and more than one million people were killed under the hand of Pol Pot. At S-21, my hand is stained with the blood of people killed there," said Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav.

Duch was responding to testimony by Nayan Chanda, former editor of the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review, who spoke of how the Khmer Rouge's 1975 communist revolution descended into a bloody territorial conflict with Vietnam.

Duch said that Chanda had mis-named his book about infighting between Asia's communists, "Brother Enemy," because Cambodia regarded Vietnam as a rival.

"The title of your book is 'Brother Enemy'. If you talked about Korea, then I would support it. They have a joint history, they have a joint territory and they have a joint language," Duch said.

"As for us and Vietnam, we never had any joint territory."

Duch, who faces life in jail for alleged crimes against humanity, apologised at the start of his trial in late March for his role in the regime, but maintains he never personally executed anyone.

Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998, and many believe the tribunal is the last chance to find justice for victims of the regime, which killed up to two million people.

The tribunal was formed in 2006 after nearly a decade of wrangling between the United Nations and the Cambodian government, and is scheduled to try four other senior Khmer Rouge leaders.

Cambodia: The long road to justice in Cambodia

Cambodia: The long road to justice in Cambodia
17/02 19:56 CET
From 1975 to 1979.

It took the Khmer Rouge just four years to exterminate up to two million people – around a quarter of the population.

Nearly every family lost loved ones.

So how could Cambodia close one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century without bringing those responsible to justice?

It has been a long journey.

In 1993, UN-run elections produced a government seeking reconciliation. But officials realised that legal action against surviving Khmer Rouge leaders would be needed to bring about national unity.

Hence a letter sent four years later to the then United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, requesting UN assistance.

But Pol Pot was to escape judgement. He had fled to the jungle near the Thai border when Vietnamese troops drove the Khmer Rouge out of Phnom Penh. Ousted as leader of the movement in 1997 after a power struggle, he died the following year. Journalists were told he had suffered a heart attack.

In 2003, after years of negotiations, the UN and Cambodia signed a deal to set up a joint “Killing Fields” court. But the plan languished for years amid the Cambodian government’s determined efforts to retain control.

Created in the capital, the tribunal’s official name is the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.

Using a modified form of the country’s French-based judicial system, domestic and foreign judges and prosecutors work jointly in a bid to ensure independence. The trial chamber of three Cambodian and two foreign judges requires four to agree on a verdict.

Duch is among five ageing and infirm senior figures due to face trial on various charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

There is former Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister Ieng Sary and his wife. Also facing trial is Nuon Chea, the group’s chief ideologue and Pol Pot’s former right hand man. And there is fomer Khmer Rouge official head of state Khieu Samphan.

Survivors hope the trials will at last bring closure to their grief.

War Crime: Call for AFP to investigate war criminals

War Crime: Call for AFP to investigate war criminals

Source: PM - Wednesday, 11 February , 2009 18:38:00
Reporter: Mark Colvin
MARK COLVIN: How many war criminals are living among us?

Probably quite a few, according to a paper unveiled at the Lowy Institute today.

Its author Fergus Hanson says more needs to be done to find, convict and if necessary, extradite war criminals.

I asked him about Australia's historical record on war criminals.

FERGUS HANSON: We've had no successful prosecutions, no successful extradition and no revocation of citizenship in any war crimes case in Australian history. So, and that I think is not necessarily an indication that there aren't any suspects here, it's more a case of how many resources, how much, how many resources we dedicate to this issue.

MARK COLVIN: You say that we've failed repeatedly. You mean, since the Second World War?

FERGUS HANSON: Immediately following the Second World War, it's a little bit of an obscure point of history, but quite interestingly we ran about 800 trials of Japanese defendants. And that resulted in about 500 convictions and over 100 executions, in and outside of Australia.

But since then there really hasn't been any attempt to deal with domestic war crimes suspects except for the Special Investigations Unit which ran in the late 1980s and early 1990s and looked at Nazi, accused Nazi war criminals.

MARK COLVIN: And even that didn't have a very high strike rate.

FERGUS HANSON: No, you're right. There was charges laid against three individuals, but no convictions. And the unit was disbanded in 1992. Now, we've set up border screening processes about seven years ago, but the international experience really demonstrates that no matter how good your border screening processes are, you're always going to get suspects slipping through. There's just too many people going through the doors to really stay on top of it.

MARK COLVIN: Do you think there were Nazi war criminals who lived here in obscurity and died in obscurity?

FERGUS HANSON: The evidence would seem to suggest that. If you look at the report, the final report of the Special Investigations Unit it concluded there was 27 cases where it was satisfied that suspects had committed serious war crimes, but there was insufficient evidence to launch a prosecution.

MARK COLVIN: But to bring it close to date, the Balkans obviously provided a lot of immigration to this country. Is it possible that war criminals from the Balkans Wars of the 1990s are living here undetected?

FERGUS HANSON: In my paper I've tried to steer away from identifying a single region where war crimes suspects might have come from. But I think certainly anywhere where there's been a serious conflict in the last few decades there would quite possibly be the case that there were suspected war criminals living here.

I mean, there was the Yugoslav conflict, there's enormous genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994, there's a conflict that's ongoing in the Democratic Republic of Congo where millions of people have been killed. And a similar problem on an enormous scale in Sudan at the moment.

MARK COLVIN: The ones you haven't mentioned would be, for instance, from Vietnam and Cambodia.

FERGUS HANSON: Afghanistan, Chile, there's a number of conflicts I think. There's, I mean there's been dozens and dozens of international conflicts, and pretty much any of them are potential sources of suspected war criminals.

MARK COLVIN: So what should the authorities do? It seems to me that it's a real looking for a needle in a haystack situation. Looking as an outsider, I mean, how do you go about finding an Iraqi war criminal or a Cambodian war criminal in Australia?

FERGUS HANSON: Yeah, you're right, it has really, I mean, because it is very difficult it's always tended to be put in the too-hard basket and it's something that just gets pushed, pushed back and pushed back. But there's been some recent experience from other countries that really demonstrates that it is possible to take measures that are relatively modest and that are very successful.

MARK COLVIN: What kinds of things?

FERGUS HANSON: The first, the first and most important is really to have dedicated resources to look into this issue. It's never going to be a priority issue to look into because it's very difficult to get results, so you need to have dedicated resources.

MARK COLVIN: By which you might mean, say, a unit of the Australian Federal Police?

FERGUS HANSON: Exactly. A small unit within the Australian Federal Police. And we're not talking on a grand scale here, the SIU (Special Investigations Unit) was quite large, I'm talking about something that is relatively modest, a few staff to conduct investigations, raise awareness in local, key communities, and conduct a small number of investigations each year into the most appropriate cases.

MARK COLVIN: What are the consequences of inaction? I mean, I remember a story, I think it was last year, about a woman who found herself in the same English language class as a man who had allegedly raped her.

FERGUS HANSON: Yeah, I mean, on the grass roots level it's obviously very painful for the victims of these atrocious crimes to be left having to face, you know, the people who have perpetrated these crimes against them, or allegedly have. So I think on that level there's a very strong reason why these allegations should be investigated and resources should be given to allow that to occur.

On a bigger level, on a larger scale, I think it really, Australia will find itself increasingly at odds with the international trends. We've seen dedicated war crimes units set up in the US, in Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and trials are taking place in other countries, especially in Europe. So I think if Australia continues with its current approach it will increasingly find itself at odds with the, with international trends. And that doesn't speak well, I don't think, in terms of its good international citizenship, especially in the context of the UN Security Council bid, or its commitment to end impunity for war crimes globally.

MARK COLVIN: Fergus Hanson of the Lowy Institute.

KRT: A man of principle stands up

A man of principle stands up

The Phnom Penh Post Written by Neth Pheaktra

Wednesday, 21 January 2009

Lawyer Sa Sovan says he's fighting to strengthen Cambodia's judiciary in defending former KR head of state Khieu Samphan Photo by: Anne Laure Poree Sa Sovan (right) and his co-lawyer Jacque Verges at the Extraordinary Chambers last year. FRENCH-educated lawyer Sa Sovan, 68, lost "around 50" relatives, including his father, at the hands of the Khmer Rouge regime. As the Cambodian co-lawyer for former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan, he has been at odds with other victims, notably when he engaged in a shouting match following a December 4 hearing with victims angered by the request that every document in his client's case file be translated into French. In an interview with the Post, Sa Sovan discusses his decision to join the defence team and what the Khmer Rouge tribunal means for the country's judicial system. Why did you decide to defend Khieu Samphan? I lost around 50 relatives to the Khmer Rouge regime, but I decided to defend Khieu Samphan nonetheless because I want to defend the justice system. Khieu Samphan proposed I defend him after his former Cambodian co-lawyer, Say Bory, resigned because of health problems [in June 2008]. If I had not accepted Khieu Samphan's proposition, he might not have received good representation. I could not reject his request because he was a lawmaker at Sa-Ang district, Kandal province, my home district, during the Sangkum Reastr Niyum regime of then-Prince Norodom Sihanouk. I knew Khieu Samphan. I knew that he was a just person. I make a clear separation between the personal losses I sustained and the legal merits of the case. I already lost my dad. I do not want to lose respect for the rule of law in my country. If the tribunal cannot find sufficient evidence against him, Khieu Samphan should be released. Similarly, if the tribunal finds that Khieu Samphan is guilty, the court should sentence him. I will not protest. Currently, there is a cloud of uncertainty; we don't know who is guilty for the crimes of the regime. I want to find justice. You say Khieu Samphan is a just person. Do you think you can make this case convincingly in light of the prosecution's allegations? In defending him, I plan to note that he served the nation in joining the Sangkum Reastr Niyum regime and, later, in criticising officials in that regime. People in the regime attacked him, but he continued in politics, joining the opposition movement. I think the Khmer Rouge pushed him into a high position before he knew about the killings and the torture. He found out about the killings in 1979, after the Khmer Rouge fell from power. The Cambodian people know this. We want to answer the question: Why didn't Khieu Samphan know what was going on? The defence team and the tribunal are exploring this question. Have you found defending Khieu Samphan to be difficult? With my skills in private and criminal law, I don't have any problem defending Khieu Samphan. Also, I have known [Khieu Sampan's French co-lawyer] Jacques Verges since I was in France. I know his name and how famous he is, and I am familiar with his thinking. So we find it easy to work together. Your client's case has been stalled by the translation issue, with you and Verges insisting all documents be translated into French. Has the tribunal replied to your request? Not yet. According to the agreement between the Cambodian government and United Nations, documents should be translated into the three official languages used by the tribunal: Khmer, French and English. Khieu Samphan has a Khmer lawyer and a French lawyer. There are many documents that have not been translated from Khmer and English into French. If the tribunal doesn't translate them, the French co-lawyer cannot defend Khieu Samphan because he won't be able to fully understand the accusations. Given that many victims of the Khmer Rouge are holding onto a lot of anger, do you worry about your personal security? I decided to defend Khieu Samphan because I would like to search for real justice for all parties, including both the victims and those who are charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. I am not worried about my security. But the state should teach people about the law so we can avoid the type of situation we had [on December 4]. What is your reaction to accusations of corruption at the tribunal? I have heard that the tribunal has been accused of corruption, but I don't have time to investigate this because I am too busy defending Khieu Samphan, teaching law students and writing a book. I will let other people investigate these accusations. I heard the rumours before I worked there. What do you expect the KRT will accomplish for the Cambodian judicial system? I think that the tribunal is very important and will be a good example for the Cambodian judicial system. I am proud of it. The Cambodian participants are learning a lot from the international participants. I hope they will use this knowledge in the future, even if they don't use it in the current situation. Interview by Neth Pheaktra

Trial date set for KR leaders

Khmer Rouge Leader Gets Trial Date At Last

Wednesday, January 7, 2009
By Tim Johnston
Washington Post Foreign Service

BANGKOK, Jan. 7 -- Three decades to the day after the fall of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge regime, the country finally received word of a possible starting date for the trial of one of its key leaders.

International co-prosecutor Robert Petit said that Kaing Khek Iev, who was better known as Duch when he headed the Tuol Sleng torture center in Phnom Penh, will probably go on trial in March. But he said four other defendants, all in their 80s, are unlikely to take the stand until 2010.

The trial process, which has so far cost $50 million, has been marred by delays, controversial defense motions, accusations of corruption and, most recently, a public dispute between Petit and his Cambodian co-prosecutor, Chea Leang, over future prosecutions.

Petit wants to file charges against an additional five or six former Khmer Rouge members, but Chea Leang has objected, saying that the court should concentrate its limited resources on the cases on hand. She has also cited a need to focus on national reconciliation.

The court's pre-trial chamber is due to rule on the disagreement.

As many as 1.7 million Cambodians -- roughly one-fifth of the population -- were killed or succumbed to disease, malnutrition or overwork during the four years the Khmer Rouge were in power before they were removed by Vietnamese forces in 1979.

Human Rights Watch has long been critical of the court's inability to bring the perpetrators of the Khmer Rouge's brutal rule to justice.

"After 30 years, no one has been tried, convicted or sentenced for the crimes of one of the bloodiest regimes of the 20th century," said Brad Adams, who is Asia director for Human Rights Watch. "This is no accident. For more than a decade, China and the United States blocked efforts at accountability, and for the past decade, [Cambodian Prime Minister] Hun Sen has done his best to thwart justice."

For many Cambodians, Jan. 7 is a bittersweet date: It marks their deliverance from the Khmer Rouge but also the beginning of a 10-year occupation by Vietnam.

Hun Sen, who came to power 23 years ago under the aegis of the Vietnamese, has no time for such ambivalence.

"Whoever is against the day of victory is either Pol Pot or an animal," he told a crowd Tuesday.

Cambodia’s Liberation Day marked

Cambodia’s Liberation Day marked

Source: Vietnam Net 09:25' 07/01/2009 (GMT+7)

VietNamNet Bridge – The 30th anniversary of Cambodia ’s Liberation Day (January 7) was celebrated in Hanoi on Jan. 6, by the Cambodian embassy and the Vietnam Union of Friendship Organisations (VUFO). Prominent among participants were Vu Oanh, former Politburo member and head of the Liaison Committee for former Vietnamese Experts in Cambodia ; Vu Mao, Chairman of the Vietnam-Cambodia Friendship Association; Cambodian Ambassador to Vietnam Vann Phal; and Khamphan Anlavan, counselor of the Lao embassy. Jan 7 holds significance as a turning point in Cambodian history, as it is the day that the Cambodian people came back to life and began national reconstruction, said Vu Mao. Liberation Day is also a symbol of the traditional friendly relations between the two fraternal countries, Vietnam and Cambodia, he said. Ambassador Vann Phal said the Cambodian people have great appreciation to Vietnam for the events of January 7, 1979. Vietnam’s involvement saved Cambodian lives, and helped fight the Khmer Rouge, he said. He stressed Vietnam’s timely assistance, saying that he appreciates that many Vietnamese soldiers died for the January 7 victory. He thanked the Vietnamese Party, State and people, and especially the families of those who died for the revival of Cambodia. Phal said he wished for Vietnam and Cambodia to maintain the fine friendly and neighbourly relations and comprehensive cooperation. The celebrations took place with song and dance performances by Cambodian students studying in Vietnam. The Ho Chi Minh City chapters of the VUFO and the Vietnam-Cambodia Friendship Association also held a function marking the Cambodian Liberation Day. (Source: VNA)

Cambodia’s Liberation Day marked

Cambodia’s Liberation Day marked

Source: Vietnam Net 09:25' 07/01/2009 (GMT+7)

VietNamNet Bridge – The 30th anniversary of Cambodia ’s Liberation Day (January 7) was celebrated in Hanoi on Jan. 6, by the Cambodian embassy and the Vietnam Union of Friendship Organisations (VUFO). Prominent among participants were Vu Oanh, former Politburo member and head of the Liaison Committee for former Vietnamese Experts in Cambodia ; Vu Mao, Chairman of the Vietnam-Cambodia Friendship Association; Cambodian Ambassador to Vietnam Vann Phal; and Khamphan Anlavan, counselor of the Lao embassy. Jan 7 holds significance as a turning point in Cambodian history, as it is the day that the Cambodian people came back to life and began national reconstruction, said Vu Mao. Liberation Day is also a symbol of the traditional friendly relations between the two fraternal countries, Vietnam and Cambodia, he said. Ambassador Vann Phal said the Cambodian people have great appreciation to Vietnam for the events of January 7, 1979. Vietnam’s involvement saved Cambodian lives, and helped fight the Khmer Rouge, he said. He stressed Vietnam’s timely assistance, saying that he appreciates that many Vietnamese soldiers died for the January 7 victory. He thanked the Vietnamese Party, State and people, and especially the families of those who died for the revival of Cambodia. Phal said he wished for Vietnam and Cambodia to maintain the fine friendly and neighbourly relations and comprehensive cooperation. The celebrations took place with song and dance performances by Cambodian students studying in Vietnam. The Ho Chi Minh City chapters of the VUFO and the Vietnam-Cambodia Friendship Association also held a function marking the Cambodian Liberation Day. (Source: VNA)

30 years ago, Vietnamese forced Pol Pot from power

Dark memories of Cambodia's killing spree

Were Cambodians liberated from the Khmer Rouge, or invaded by another power?

BBC News, Page last updated at 18:27 GMT, Tuesday, 6 January 2009

Exactly 30 years ago, a coalition of Cambodian and Vietnamese troops forced Pol Pot and his followers from power - after a four-year reign which left as many as two million people dead.

But, as the BBC's Guy De Launey reports, Victory Day is not universally celebrated in Cambodia.

Even in 1979 it was a strange kind of victory.

There was no hero's welcome for the conquering troops. But nor was there a nervous population, fearful about the intentions of the incoming army. Because Phnom Penh was almost completely deserted.

The Khmer Rouge had forced millions of city-dwellers to march to the countryside when it took power in April 1975. In the intervening years only a small number of party workers were allowed to live in the capital, and they had fled as the Vietnamese-backed forces approached.

Vann Nath was one of the few Phnom Penh residents to witness the final hours of Pol Pot's murderous government. As an inmate of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, however, his was not the most comfortable vantage point.

I still don't know why I was allowed to live Vann Nath

"When the Vietnamese arrived there was a group of us locked in one room in Tuol Sleng. I heard some gunshots, outside on the main street," he remembers.

Soon after, with no little disbelief, he walked free. "In all there were seven of us who survived Tuol Sleng. To this day I still don't know why I was allowed to live."

Vann Nath had beaten formidable odds. Around 15,000 prisoners had passed through Tuol Sleng, but only a handful survived. Many died during the prison's systematic torture process; the rest were bludgeoned to death in the so-called killing fields on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.

Two million dead

Under the Khmer Rouge, tens of thousands shared a similar fate, executed as "enemies of the revolution", often on the flimsiest of pretexts. Others perished on the gruelling journey from the cities to rural villages, or starved to death while working as forced labourers on collective farms.

As many as two million Cambodians are thought to have died because of the policies of Pol Pot's government and the actions of Khmer Rouge members.

Skulls litter the Khmer Rouge's "killing fields"

The current government says the end of that era is a cause for celebration. Prime Minister Hun Sen was among the Cambodian troops who joined Vietnamese forces to oust the Khmer Rouge.

In the run-up to the anniversary, the governing Cambodian People's Party has called 7 January a "historical day" and a "new birthday" for the country.

The CPP is planning to mark the 30th anniversary in grand style. To ensure maximum attendance at a rally in Phnom Penh's Olympic Stadium, thousands of children from nearby schools will each receive cash for food and drink, as well as T-shirts and caps in CPP colours.

'Invasion'

The party political nature of the celebrations is an indication that not all Cambodians acknowledge 7 January as a day of liberation. Opposition leaders sometimes refer to it as a Vietnamese invasion.

Vietnam has had a long influence on Cambodian affairs

Pen Sovann feels that more deeply than most. He was one of the founders of the anti-Khmer Rouge front, and became prime minister in 1981 before a spectacular fall from grace.

Disagreements with the government's Vietnamese sponsors earned him first the sack, then a 10-year spell in a Hanoi prison.

"It was liberation at first. They couldn't stand and watch their neighbour's house burn, so they provided the water to help put out the fire," he says now.

"But I wasn't happy that they were trying to exert their influence over Cambodia. They were getting stronger and stronger, and even now they have more influence than the current Cambodian leaders."

Others, however, are happy to embrace 7 January as a day of liberation from the Khmer Rouge, whatever they feel about the decade-long presence of Vietnamese troops in Cambodia and the on-going close relations between the two countries.

It can hardly compare to the years of madness which had seen Khmer turn against Khmer.

Memory

For many, more than anything else, the anniversary provides an opportunity to keep alive the memory of what happened in the Pol Pot era.

They ask me, 'Why, why why?' and I tell them I don't know why they did this - to our family, to Cambodian people Pum Chantinie

Pum Chantinie is now the secretary general of the Cambodian Red Cross. Along with the surviving members of her family, she walked hundreds of kilometres from the countryside back to Phnom Penh in January 1979, pushing a hand-made cart - only to discover their old house wrecked and surrounded by barbed wire.

"Our family gathers and we tell stories about our lives during the Khmer Rouge regime to our young generation," she says. "They ask me, 'Why, why why?' and I tell them I don't know why they did this - to our family, to Cambodian people."

Most Cambodians are too young to remember the Pol Pot era, or even the years of civil war which followed. But the anniversary should be followed, within months, by another reminder of what happened. The first trial at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal may start as early as March.

In the dock, charged with crimes against humanity, will be Vann Nath's former jailer, the man best known as Comrade Duch. All the indications are that he is willing to reveal what he knows about how the Khmer Rouge leadership made the decisions which led to so many deaths.

That may not be a cause for celebration. But it may at least answer some of the questions that people like Pum Chantinie have struggled with for so many years.

Curtain raises again on Jacques Verges

Curtain raises again on Jacques Verges

Source: Asia Time, 7 January 2009
By Stephen Kurczy

PHNOM PENH - He requests French wine - which can cost up to US$162 a bottle at the Raffles Hotel Le Royal in Phnom Penh - but the legendary and controversial French attorney Jacques Verges has to settle for $8 glasses of house red when he stays at impoverished Cambodia's swankiest hotel.

He's a celebrity lawyer whose fame now equals that of some of his most notorious clients; and he gained it by defending the indefensible. His abysmal win rate might embarrass a lesser personality - before France abolished the death penalty in 1981, he had earned the nickname "Monsieur Guillotine" - but not Verges.

The man nicknamed "the Devil's Advocate" is a walking


contradiction. Verges earned a reputation as a war hero with Charles de Gaulle's Free French resistance during Word War II, but was jailed in and disbarred in 1960 for openly supporting terrorists. He wrote a book titled The Beauty of Crime and once admitted to a "passionate interest in evil" - but he has also changed the course of legal history.

And precisely because he embodies such conflicting narratives - notably with a puff of a fine cigar and a sip of red wine - he is able to defend the world's most infamous figures.

Literally and legally, Verges is on stage once again. In Paris, he is currently performing a self-penned, one-man play three times a week at the Madeleine Theater. And in Phnom Penh he's become the star attraction of the ongoing United Nations-backed trial for the former leaders of the Khmer Rouge - some of whom were his close friends and Parisian classmates.

At present, the stop-start tribunal - or the Extraordinary Chambers in Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) as the court is known - is at a standstill amid swirling charges of internal corruption and heated arguments over how many suspects to bring before the court. Into the vacuum of substantive progress have come histrionic courtroom antics from Verges.

Ever the showman, Verges has recently lambasted the ECCC for wasting money and lacking ethics. (See Killing time at Cambodia's 'show trial', December 12, 2008.) He has called the entire three-year, $50 million enterprise a lamentable "show trial" and challenged court officials to an open debate.

Verges claims he can't defend his client and fellow Sorbonne student, former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan, until all evidence against is translated into French. But Verges' membership in the Paris Bar states he is comfortable working in French and English. Critics have called this, and other legal maneuvers, blatant efforts to stall the court.

The 83-year-old denies that genocide occurred in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge's rule from 1975 to 1979, when approximately 1.7 million perished, arguing that most died of starvation and disease as a result of an American embargo. But Verges has refused to visit the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), an archive of the crimes committed by the ultra-Maoist regime in 200 prisons and 20,000 mass graves across Cambodia.

He has befriended terrorists and mass murderers across the globe, but so far has avoided victims of the Khmer Rouge.

"He's afraid of me," Youk Chhang, director of the DC-Cam, says of Verges. "He's afraid that my reaction would damage his argument."

Excluding Verges, every defense attorney at the ECCC has met with Chhang and utilized DC-Cam, the world's largest repository of documents on the Khmer Rouge with more than 650,000 papers and 6,000 photographs from the Khmer Rouge's rule between 1975 and 1979.

Chhang witnessed his sister's disembowelment after she was accused of stealing rice. He says Verges is reticent to face someone like himself, who has come to terms with his family members' murder and can calmly and convincingly discuss the regime's atrocities.

"He uses emotion as an argument. I don't. I use facts," Chhang told Asia Times Online.

Verges, however, has proven that tapping into emotion can be effective in court. By appealing to public opinion, he brokered the release of his first well-known client, Algerian terrorist Djamila Bouhired. It was 1956 and Verges was 31. A year earlier he'd graduated with a law degree from the University of Paris, passed the Paris Bar, and come to realize his passion during his first case defending "some small-time hoodlum", as he says in the 2007 documentary Terror's Advocate. He looked at the felon and thought: "'That guy is me. I could have done what he did if I'd been in his shoes.' It was then I knew my calling."

A year later, when young Algerian student Bouhired was accused of planting a bomb in a cafe in Algiers that killed several French military officers, Verges volunteered to defend her.

Verges says he became obsessed with Bouhired's case because of his own family's struggle with colonialism. (Friends of Verges suggest he was merely obsessed with the beautiful Bouhired, whom he later married.) He and his twin brother were born in 1925 in Thailand, where their father, Raymond, was serving as a French diplomat. Their mother was Vietnamese, and the mixed marriage led to Raymond's forced resignation from the French foreign services. Hecklers shouted "Chinaman!" at Verges during Bouhired's trial.

Verges lost the case and Bouhired was sentenced to death. In turn, Verges took the case to the public. He penned articles and essays attacking the French court's validity, sparking public rallies and international calls for Bouhired's release. Her execution was delayed and she was eventually pardoned. Verges, after temporary disbarment and two months in jail for supporting terrorists, courted Bouhired.

Longtime friend and French cartoonist Sine, in Terrors Advocate, says he joked to Verges that if he married Bouhired he'd have to convert to Islam, and be circumcised. Nevertheless, Verges converted and changed his name to Mansoor. He and Bouhired settled in Algiers and had two children. He became a divorce attorney, but hated the life. After seven years, he left his wife and children and went into hiding.

Where Verges went from 1970 to 1978 remains a mystery, but some believe he was with the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Verges had joined the Communist Party as a teenager and while studying in Paris had met fellow students Khieu Samphan and Saloth Sar, who later became Pol Pot.

DC-Cam's Chhang said he and filmmaker Barbet Schroeder, director of Terror's Advocate, searched for months for evidence that Verges visited Cambodia in the 1970s but found nothing. Former Brother Number 2, Nuon Chea, who is now awaiting trial at the ECCC, has said he is certain Verges was not in Cambodia during that period.

After he re-emerged, Verges took up his old practice. In 1987, he defended Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, known as "The Butcher of Lyon" for overseeing a Gestapo camp in France. In 1997, he represented Illich Ramirez Sanchez, aka Carlos the Jackal, who masterminded a 1975 raid on Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries headquarters in Vienna. Verges later volunteered to defend Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic, ex-leader of the former Yugoslavia.

Verges' reputation as a defense advocate is disputable. "The Butcher" got life in prison and "The Jackal" sacked Verges and found a new lawyer. Both Saddam and Milosevic refused Verges' counsel. This is all of no matter to Verges, says international war correspondent and Carlos the Jackal biographer Colin Smith.

"It appears that [Verges] is utterly terrified to take on a case he might win. Instead, he delights in defending the indefensible," Smith told Asia Times Online by e-mail. Verges did not return e-mails or phone calls for an interview.

By influencing public emotions in his numerous cases, Verges changed the nature of legal defense. Michael Radu, an expert on terrorism and senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, calls Verges a trailblazer for radical lawyers everywhere. In the 1950s, before Verges took Bouhired's case outside the court, appealing to public opinion was unheard of.

"You could say that I invented the tactic," Verges says in his play, according to a recent article in Radio France Internationale. " ... [B]efore I used the trial as a tribune, the accused were isolated. And now they aren't alone and they can appeal to world opinion".

When it was confirmed in 2006 that Verges would take part in the Khmer Rouge trial, the news was not unwelcome - even from the court's prosecutors.

"I have not worked before with Jacques Verges, but his reputation goes before him, and in searching for the truth he is a man who never fears to ask any question of anyone, no matter how difficult the answer may be for many people," Rupert Skilbeck, the ECCC's principle defender, told the Phnom Penh Post at the time. "If one of the purposes of the ECCC is to find out what happened in Cambodia and why, then there is no better advocate to assist in that task. Attacking the prosecution is the job of any good defense advocate. Maitre Verges happens to be very good at it."

Verges' play, Serial Paideur, is a two-hour monologue. According to the playbill, Verges dramatizes a courtroom battle between prosecution and defense as they tell two, not necessarily true, but probable, stories.

"Jacques Verges is a showman," says Theary Seng, a civil party victim at the ECCC and a US-educated lawyer and member of the New York Bar Association. While a trial proceeds inside the chambers of the ECCC, Seng said she expects another trial to simultaneously play out in the court of public opinion. Just as Verges won Bouhired's case outside the courtroom, Seng said she expects Verges will shine in the public arena.

"I think he will raise, from his grandstanding, political issues that will broaden the scope of the trial. ... We may find it distasteful, but through it, if he's raising issues that are of curiosity and drawing attention, then there are limited benefits," she said.

Seng briefly interacted with Verges at the first Khieu Samphan hearing in February as the two entered the court compound together.

"It was my first time seeing him in person," Seng recalls. "After passing through security, I turned to him and said, 'You must be Jacques Verges. I am Theary Seng.' He turned to me and said, 'Oh,' and walked away."

Seng laughed. "He's a very intimidating, unfriendly man," she continued. "He's just an old, grouchy, celebrity lawyer. He is one loud voice. Other voices will help to balance out his."

Those are the voices that DC-Cam's Chhang and Seng want Verges to hear. Seng lost her parents to the Khmer Rouge. As executive director of the Center for Social Development, a human-rights organization in Phnom Penh, Seng said she is now helping register as civil parties more than 60 Khmer Rouge survivors who also lost their parents to the regime.

Many hope to testify in court, including Seng, and many have already attended pre-trial hearings, including the December 4 appeal of Khieu Samphan's detention, when Verges accused the court of misappropriating funds and failing to translate all evidence into a language he can understand.

"It's a joke," Verges told the judges during the hearing. "We cannot accept this state of affairs," he told the media during a press conference afterward.

Verges' provocations drew tears and cries from many of the victims present. Several said they would lose all faith in the court if Verges remained involved. But Seng still argues that Verges' approach will broaden the issues addressed by the court.

"Jacques Verges, because of his history of defending political figures, he will raise political questions and issues and implicate the 'why'," Seng told Asia Times Online. "We know the US will never be on trial. We know [former US secretary of state] Henry Kissinger will never be on trial. Given that he is a very sharp lawyer, Jacques Verges will know how to raise questions in the minds of the larger public."

Of more concern than Verges' controversial tactics, says Seng, is corruption on the Cambodian side of the court, and political interference by the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen, himself a former Khmer Rouge cadre.

While Seng sees the UN-backed tribunal tainted by its Cambodian legal team, Ly Monysak, who lost both his parents to the regime, argues that foreign attorneys like Verges are the ones derailing justice and misappropriating funds.

"Foreigners are using the money to stay in luxury. Not for a speedy trial," Ly Monysak said after the December 4 public hearing.

Luxury, indeed. The ECCC picked up Verges' $450 tab in December when he stayed two nights at Phnom Penh's Raffles Hotel Le Royal. The bill would have been higher if not for the ECCC's special rate of $300 rooms for only $100 a night.

Verges' latest bill shows $21.93 in drinks from his room's wet bar, a $20.35 meal and a $38.73 meal delivered to his room. Nothing abnormal, except for the fact that Verges had just accused the court of wasting funds by conducting community awareness trips in Cambodia's rural provinces.

On December 4, before flying back to Paris for his one-man show, which runs until the end of February, Verges retreated to Raffles for a late lunch. He requested a glass of French wine, a hotel employee told this correspondent, but the options were only South African, Chilean or Australian.

Verges, perhaps out of concern for the court's finances, settled for a glass of the house red.

Stephen Kurczy is a Cambodia-based journalist.

(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

HRW/Asia: Cambodia: 30 Years After Fall of the Khmer Rouge, Justice Still Elusive

Cambodia: 30 Years After Fall of the Khmer Rouge, Justice Still Elusive

Anniversary Highlights Stalled Trials for Some of 20th Century’s Worst Killers

January 5, 2009

After 30 years, no one has been tried, convicted or sentenced for the crimes of one of the bloodiest regimes of the 20th century. This is no accident. For more than a decade, China and the United States blocked efforts at accountability, and for the past decade Hun Sen has done his best to thwart justice.

Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

Related Materials:

Cambodia: Khmer Rouge Tribunal Must Meet International Standards

International Standards in Khmer Rouge Trials a Must

(New York, January 5, 2009) - Thirty years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia's culture of impunity remains as strong as ever, Human Rights Watch said today. Under Prime Minister Hun Sen, the Cambodian government continues to obstruct the United Nations-supported court created to try senior Khmer Rouge leaders and others most responsible for the deaths of up to 2 million people during the Khmer Rouge-era.

Despite more than three years of operations and the expenditure of approximately US$50 million, the UN-backed Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia established to hold the Khmer Rouge accountable have held no trials.

"After 30 years, no one has been tried, convicted or sentenced for the crimes of one of the bloodiest regimes of the 20th century," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "This is no accident. For more than a decade, China and the United States blocked efforts at accountability, and for the past decade Hun Sen has done his best to thwart justice."

The Extraordinary Chambers have been deeply flawed in both design and practice. UN reports have concluded that the Cambodian judiciary lacks independence, competence and professionalism. Yet at the insistence of Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander, the Extraordinary Chambers were established with a majority of Cambodian judges and a Cambodian "co-prosecutor" and "co-investigating judge." The United Nations opposed that structure.

Prosecutors and investigating judges have conducted only limited field investigations. The Extraordinary Chambers have also been mired in allegations of corruption among its Cambodian personnel, with charges of job-selling and bribery.

Five Khmer Rouge leaders whom Hun Sen has allowed to be arrested are in detention, but no other cases have been filed against the many persons implicated in horrific crimes during Khmer Rouge rule. Human Rights Watch has called for broadening the scope of investigations beyond the five already charged.

Today, the Extraordinary Chambers published a statement in which the Cambodian co-prosecutor opposed filing additional cases. The international co-prosecutor rightly asserted in his filing with the Extraordinary Chambers that the charges fall within the court's jurisdiction and "would lead to a more comprehensive accounting of the crimes that were committed." Yet for political and policy reasons, the Cambodian co-prosecutor has opposed bringing more cases, citing "Cambodia's past instability and the continued need for national reconciliation."

"No serious observer believes there is any threat to Cambodia's stability if additional cases are filed against alleged Khmer Rouge killers," said Adams. "On the 30th anniversary of the Khmer Rouge's fall from power, the Cambodian government is playing games. This is a transparently political attempt to stop the court from doing its work."

The Khmer Rouge came to power at the end of the United States' war in Indochina. Led by Pol Pot and Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge was in power from April 17, 1975 to January 7, 1979. Estimates suggest that as many as 2 million of Cambodia's 8 million people were killed or died from disease, starvation, or forced labor during this period.

After the Khmer Rouge carried out numerous cross-border attacks on Vietnam in which hundreds of villagers were massacred, the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia. It pushed the Khmer Rouge out of Phnom Penh on January 7, 1979. The Khmer Rouge retreated to the Thai border, where it received support from Thailand, China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore and others for the next decade.

To force the Vietnamese army out of Cambodia, the US then led a broad international embargo on Cambodia, depriving a population that had survived inconceivable violence, deprivation, and hardship of the assistance necessary to rebuild their health and their country.

Throughout the 1980s the Khmer Rouge conducted a violent insurgency in which tens of thousands died. For geopolitical reasons, discussions of holding the Khmer Rouge leadership accountable for their crimes while in power were blocked, principally by the US and China.

At China's insistence, the Khmer Rouge was included as a party to the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements, which led to creation of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), the UN's largest peacekeeping effort up to that time, and national elections to form a new government. The Khmer Rouge withdrew from the peacekeeping force, but the elections went ahead without it. China pledged to withdraw support from the Khmer Rouge thereafter, which it apparently did. But elements in the Thai army continued to support the Khmer Rouge and deaths and injuries, many from landmines, mounted.

The Khmer Rouge movement fractured publicly in 1996 with the amnesty granted to Ieng Sary, the former Khmer Rouge foreign minister, by the Cambodian government. The movement effectively collapsed after the death of Pol Pot in 1998 and the defection to the Cambodian government of other top leaders, including Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, and thousands of Khmer Rouge soldiers.

In 1997, Hun Sen and his co-prime minister, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, sent a letter to the UN secretary-general at the time, Kofi Annan, asking for an international tribunal to hold the Khmer Rouge accountable. This effort was blocked by China, which made it clear that it would veto any UN Security Council resolution to create such a court, and by Hun Sen, who with the collapse of the Khmer Rouge, lost interest in holding its leaders accountable. Instead, Hun Sen invited Khmer Rouge leaders who defected to his government to his home, toasted them with champagne, and called for Cambodians to "bury the past."

"Hun Sen has spent most of the past 10 years trying to undermine UN efforts to establish a credible tribunal, miring it in delay and fights over jurisdiction," said Adams. "Now he is trying to stop a few more cases from being filed."

Human Rights Watch said that the impunity enjoyed by the Khmer Rouge has been matched in the post-Khmer Rouge era. The Vietnamese-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea, in power from 1979 until 1993, routinely violated the fundamental rights of Cambodians. During the UNTAC period in the early 1990s, the United Nations recorded hundreds of killings and attacks by forces under the control of Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party.

On March 30, 1997, a grenade attack on an opposition political rally killed at least 16 people and wounded approximately 150. Hun Sen's bodyguard unit has been implicated in the attack. In July 1997, Hun Sen staged a coup against his royalist coalition partners in which more than 100 opposition figures were extrajudically killed. In the 1998 elections, dozens more were killed. In the past decade, many opposition politicians, journalists, labor leaders and human rights activists have been killed or attacked. No perpetrator has been held accountable, in spite of the availability of evidence in many of these cases.

"Whether it is for Khmer Rouge crimes or those of more recent times, brutal, well-known perpetrators remain free men," said Adams. "Sadly, impunity remains almost complete in Cambodia."

Cambodia observes 30th anniversary of end of genocidal regime

"Pol Pot: Anatomy of A Nightmare"

Examiner.com

January 3, 1:56 PM

by Marsha Dubrow, DC Arts & Travel Examiner

Monks will chant at the Genocide Museum and “killing fields” throughout Cambodia on January 7 to mark the 30^th anniversary of the fall of Pol Pot’s horrific regime – one of history’s worst.

Dictator Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime killed an estimated 1.7 million people – more than one-fifth of Cambodia’s population -- in the late 1970’s. They were either murdered outright, or died from forced labor and starvation.

At the most notorious killing field, Choeung Ek , 8,000 skulls are stacked up in the former orchard just a few miles from Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh. Even the glorious Angkor Wat temple was used as a killing field.

Cambodia’s deadliest prison, then called S-21, is now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The 290 skulls on display there used to be arranged in the shape of Cambodia. The walls of the former high school are papered with head shots of the 14,000 prisoners tortured there daily by the Khmer Rouge. These photos can be ordered, if you really want, as wallpaper for your computer.

Although one of history’s worst mass killers, Pol Pot never faced trial and died peacefully in his sleep at age 73. “Pol Pot” was one of 10 aliases for Saloth Sar, a former schoolteacher . “The more often you change your name the better. It confuses the enemy,” he once said, according to “Pol Pot: Anatomy of A Nightmare” by Philip Short ((Henry Holt and Company).

Five former Khmer Rouge leaders are languishing in a Cambodian-United Nations detention center -- whose food they’ve complained about. Their long-planned trial is still not in sight, and the detainees, in their 70s and 80s, may well die peacefully before facing justice.

Recently, I realized a life-long dream to visit Cambodia. I asked my extraordinarily knowledgeable guide, Phalla Chan, how he had managed to survive those years. “I guess I’m strong,” he replied. “Today is for today, not for thinking about yesterday.”

I immersed myself in Cambodia’s tragedies of yesterday, converted into today’s tourist attractions described above. The killing fields and museums affected me as deeply as Holocaust museums in Washington and in my hometown of Houston; Robben Island prison off Cape Town, South Africa where Nelson Mandela was held for 27 years in a three-square-yard cell; the Spanish Inquisition Museum in Lima, Peru; among many others.

“Cultivate a heart of love that knows no anger” – Cambodian proverb.

For more information:

“Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare” by Philip Short (Henry Holt and Company)

“The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79” by Ben Kiernan (Yale University Press)

Water of life springs from Pol Pot's canals

Published Date: 28 December 2008

By Thomas Fuller in Baray, Cambodia

THE dry season has taken hold here, but water is everywhere. It pours out of sluice gates with the roar of an alpine torrent. Children do backflips into the ubiquitous canals and then pull their friends in with them. Fishermen cast their nets for minnows, and villagers wash their Chinese-made motorcycles.

"It's never dry here," said Chan Mo, a 36-year-old rice farmer standing on top of a dike.

The reason? The Khmer Rouge canals have come back to life. By the time the murderous government of Pol Pot was toppled three decades ago, 1.7 million Cambodians were dead from overwork, starvation and disease, and the country was in ruin.

But the forced labour of millions of Cambodians left behind something useful – or that is how the current government here sees it.

The leaders of the Khmer Rouge were obsessed with canals, embankments and dams. They presided over hundreds of irrigation projects to revive the country's glorious but perhaps mythical past as an agrarian wonderland.

"There has never been a modern regime that placed more emphasis and resources towards developing irrigation," wrote Jeffrey Himel, a water resource engineer, in a recent study of Cambodia's irrigation system.

"The Khmer Rouge emptied all cities and towns, and put practically the entire population to work planting rice and digging irrigation dikes and canals."

Some of the canals were poorly designed – "hydraulic nonsense", says Alain Goffeau, a French irrigation expert with the Asian Development Bank. But many were viable.

The Khmer Rouge built about 70% of Cambodia's 800-plus canal networks, according to a survey commissioned by the UN in the Nineties.

Now, across this impoverished nation of 14 million people, the canals are being rebuilt by a government hoping to take advantage of the world's increasing demand for rice.

The Asian Development Bank is helping to finance the rehabilitation of a dozen canals, adding to projects financed by the Japanese and Korean governments.

"There's a lot of possibility," Goffeau said.

For older Cambodians, the canals are a source of ambivalence. Men like Loh Thoeun, a 61-year-old rice farmer, think back to the basketfuls of dirt he carried away hour after hour.

He recalled the horrors of the Khmer Rouge: the labourers, hands tied behind their backs, who were "dragged away like cows" and never returned, the Muslim families who were thrown down a nearby well. The foremen of the irrigation project in Baray were killed after the canals and embankments were completed, without explanation. Loh said he once saw Pol Pot inspect the canals on what he described as a "speedboat".

Loh had a particularly wide view of the Khmer Rouge earthworks: when he was not digging he was assigned to collect the sweet sap from the top of towering palm trees.

All of the work was done by hand in Baray, a two-hour drive north of the capital, Phnom Penh. There was no talking allowed among labourers. The Khmer Rouge played revolutionary songs and banged hubcaps to encourage the workers. Photos show huge crowds toiling in the dust.

"The earth here is very hard, and when we dug deeper we got to the hardest part – the most compact ground," said Loh, sitting in a bamboo shelter beside his rice fields. "We had to hammer at it. It was like cutting down a tree."

For so many Cambodians, the Khmer Rouge years, from 1975 to 1979, were about digging. Villagers and residents of Phnom Penh, who were forced to move to the countryside, were organised in small work units.

"I was a slave," said Ang Mongkol, now the deputy director general of the Interior Ministry, who was a law student when the Khmer Rouge came to power and was assigned to haul dirt. Ang is leading an experimental project that uses water from the canal to irrigate fields of hybrid rice varieties that promise to yield four times as much as the variety traditionally grown here. Because only about 20% of Cambodia's fields are irrigated, its rice farmers harvest on average half of Vietnam's yields and one-third of China's.

The irrigation system in Baray, which is fed with water diverted from the nearby Chinit River, functioned for several years after the Khmer Rouge left power. But in the mid-Eighties it fell into disrepair and the canals often went dry. It was only in 2005 that the government began rebuilding it.

Today the local municipality hires a maintenance crew to repair the embankments and keep the water flowing.

Loh hopes the canals he built will help double or triple his rice output. "I always recall the past to my children," he said. "I say, 'We have water from this canal that was built by the people. And many of them died.'"

Among the current workers on Baray's canal system is Sim Vy, 48. As a teenager she was also enlisted by the Khmer Rouge to help build the canals here, carrying dirt away on baskets tied to bamboo poles.

She was told she was working for national glory but received only watery gruel as recompense. Now she is paid $55 a month. "I prefer working this way," she said.