Cambodia / Genocide Tribunals

Khmer Rouge Leaders Indicted
By Seth Mydans
The New York Times, September 16, 2010
"A United Nations-backed court in Cambodia formally indicted four surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge on Thursday on charges of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and murder as the tribunal moved forward with its second case, after the conviction in July of the director of the main Khmer Rouge prison. The four leaders have been in custody since late 2007, and all have denied the charges against them. They are due in court in January for a procedural hearing, followed by substantive court sessions later in the year. The charges against them involve the deaths of 1.7 million people by execution, starvation, overwork and disease from 1975 to 1979. The defendants are Ieng Sary, 84, who was foreign minister; his wife, Ieng Thirith, 78, who was minister of social welfare; Khieu Samphan, 78, who was head of state; and Nuon Chea, 84, known as Brother No 2. The top leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998. In the earlier case, Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, was sentenced to 19 years in prison for overseeing the torture and death of at least 14,000 people in the Tuol Sleng prison. Though the trial of Duch, with its testimony about torture and killings, was gripping, experts said the second case was more important, both in the stature of the defendants and in the process of the tribunal, which tries to apply international standards of justice within the Cambodian court system.
'There is no doubt that the second trial of the most senior leaders is of the most significance,' said Alex Hinton, executive director of the Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution and Human Rights at Rutgers University. 'Without it, Duch's trial, despite its accomplishments, will always remind people of the larger failures of the court and suggest that he was a scapegoat.' [...]"