“I’m afraid it won’t meet international standards,” warns Nuon Chea’s - or brother Number two’s -lawyer. He has serious doubts about the fairness of the trial which is set to start in 2011. Nuon Chea is among four former Khmer Rouge leaders indicted last week for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity and, under Cambodian law, murder, torture and religious persecution, at Cambodia’s war crimes tribunal.

By Lula Ahrens

The four are surviving senior members of the hard-line communist Khmer Rouge movement. Former deputy to Khmer Rouge founder Pol Pot, Nuon Chea (84); foreign minister Ieng Sary (84), Sary’s wife and social affairs minister Iengh Thirith (78), and head of state Khieu Samphan (79) were charged by the UN-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) in Phnom Pehn in December 2009.

They have been in detention since their arrests in 2007. The Khmer Rouge regime wiped out nearly a quarter of the country’s population between 1975 to 1979 in a bid to create an agrarian utopia. Up to two million people died from starvation, overwork or execution. The current genocide charges relate specifically to the deaths of Vietnamese people and ethnic Cham Muslims under the Pol Pot regime.

Estimates for the number of Cham who died under the Khmer Rouge range from 100,000 to 400,000. It is not known how many Vietnamese were killed. One of the suspects, Nuon Chea, is defended by Dutch lawyers Victor Koppe and Michiel Pestman.

Mr Pestman told the IJT that he expects the trial to start in April and that it will probably last three years, excluding an appeal. He added that from a statistical perspective, it is very likely that not all four suspects
will live to hear the verdict. “Which is why one could wonder: what’s the point of this trial?”

The ECCC is composed of both local and international judges. But Mr Pestman wonders whether it was a good idea for the UN to allow a majority of Cambodian judges to serve at the tribunal.

“There is a painful gap between them and the international judges,” he said. “I’m afraid that this trial won’t be fair, that it will not meet international legal standards.”

The court is still investigating whether to open more cases against five other former Khmer Rouge cadres, but faces political and financial pressures. Prime Minister Hun Sen has said further trials could drive the country back to civil war.

Cambodia is a one-party state that has been in power since 1979. Its judiciary has an ambiguous record. Mr Pestman wonders to what extent it is able to free itself from that tradition.

“Ultimately, the government decides whether or not more suspects will be prosecuted,” Mr Pestman said.

“That tells you how far-reaching the government’s influence is.” “The Pre-Trial Chamber rejected our request to interview more witnesses, which gives the impression that the Cambodian government is in charge of who is and who isn’t allowed to testify.

The credibility of the preliminary investigation is being called into question, and that affects the reputation of the court as a whole.”

Mr Pestman said his position as a Dutch lawyer is also difficult. “On the other hand, I am a whistle blower. I am here to make sure this trial does not turn into a farce. But if the situation gets worse, I might reach the point where I, too, decide to leave.”

Frenchman Marcel Lemonde, one of the tribunal’s two co-investigating judges, announced on September 16th that he was quitting to focus on other projects. He will be replaced by a German, Siegfried Blunk.

This will be the court’s second trial, following the sentencing of the former Teol Sleng prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, alias ‘Duch’, in July for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

He was sentenced to 35 years imprisonment, reduced by 16 years for time already served and his illegal detention in a Cambodian military prison before he was handed over to the tribunal.

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