Ieng Thirith to appeal KRT detention today

(AP)
The Mekong Times
Wednesday, May 21, 2008


Ieng Thirith, a for­mer Khmer Rouge government min­ister facing charges of crimes against human­ity, will appeal for re­lease from pre-trial de­tention by Cambodia's UN-assisted tribunal, a spokesman said yes­terday.

The Khmer Rouge Tribunal (KRT) seeks justice for atrocities committed by the ultra-communist group when it ruled Cambodia in
1975-79.

Ieng Thirith, who was the Khmer Rouge social affairs minister, is among five suspects facing trial for their al­leged roles in the bru­tal regime whose radi­cal policies caused the deaths of about 1.7 mil­lion people from starva­tion, disease, overwork and execution.

Reach Sambath, a KRT spokesman, said the 76-year-old Ieng Thirith will appeal at a hearing today for re­ lease from the deten­tion facility.

He said medical doc­tors assigned to ex­amine Ieng Thirith's health have determined she is fit to be brought before judges.


Ieng Thirith's Cam­bodian lawyer Phat Pouv Seang has cited a lack of evidence for detaining her and said she "suffers from a number of debilitat­ing and chronic condi­tions, both mental and physical" that require constant medical treat­ment.

Ieng Thirith is the wife of Ieng Sary, the Khmer Rouge regime's deputy prime minister and foreign minister who is also detained on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Ieng Thirith is also
the sister-in-law of for­mer Khmer Rouge lead­er Pol Pot, who died in 1998.
In a detention order issued in November, the tribunal's inves­tigating judges said Ieng Thirith is to be tried for her support of Khmer Rouge poli­cies and practices that were "characterized by murder, extermina­tion, imprisonment, persecution on political grounds and other in­human acts."

She has rejected the charges against her as "100 percent false," ac­cording to the deten­tion order.

Ieng Thirith has de­nied responsibility for any criminal acts and said she worked at all times for the benefit of the people, according to an appeal filed in Janu­ary by her lawyer, Phat Pouv Seang.


Ieng Thirith, who was among the first genera­tion of modern female Cambodian intellectu­als, studied English literature in Paris and worked as a professor after returning to Cam­bodia in 1957.

Three years later she founded a private Eng­lish school in the capi­tal, Phnom Penh.


She followed her husband into the jungle to flee government repres­sion in 1965. Their communist movement later became a guer­rilla force that toppled the pro-American Lon Nol government in 1975, putting Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge into power and turning the country into a vast
slave labor camp. The husband and wife, who are held in separate cells, have also been allowed to occa­sionally see each other in the presence of the detention guards, Reach Sambath said.