Is KRT Planning To Arrest 3 More KR Leaders?

The expansion of the trial of former senior Khmer Rouge leaders to 2011 has brought about a financial crisis since the original budget of $56.3 million has already been spent.
The endeavour to seek more funds to support the tribunal has been made while the international community is mulling over whether or not to inject more funds into the tribunal to continue the judicial work to try former senior Khmer Rouge leaders responsible for the mass killings of almost 2 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979.
A source from the Khmer Rouge tribunal said that the co-judges and the co-prosecutors are scrutinizing the laws and other evidential documents in order to indict 3 more former senior Khmer Rouge leaders on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity like those the five already-detained Khmer Rouge leaders have been charged with.
An unofficial source said that the 3 former Khmer Rouge leaders to be charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes are the military officers who are currently serving in the Cambodian Royal Armed Forces after their integration with Phnom Penh Government in 1996.
Observers think that the consideration on the laws and evidence are being made because the tribunal needs more funds from the United Nations and the international community to support its process. Up to now, five former Khmer Rouge leaders have been detained pending trial. They include: Ieng Sary former deputy Prime Minister and foreign minister; Khieu Samphan, former chairman of State Presidium; Nuon Chea, former president of People’s Representative Assembly; Ieng Thirith, former minister for health and social actions; and Kaing Guek Eav, a.k.a. Duch, former chief of Tuol Sleng prison, known as S-21 torture center.
The international community has urged the co-judges and the co-prosecutors to revise laws and evidence in order to indict 3 other former senior Khmer Rouge officials.
In the Khmer Rouge tribunal’s compound, eight detention cells have been built, and five of them have been occupied.
However, the information source did not tell the names and positions of the 3 possible suspects whom the co-judges and co-prosecutors are investigating and who will be arrested to the Khmer Rouge tribunal.
Civil society organizations’ officials deem the plan to arrest 3 more senior Khmer Rouge leaders not important because they think the tribunal should try the five Khmer Rouge detainees very soon in order to give justice to Cambodian victims and indicate justice to almost 2 million Cambodians who died during the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror.
The officials said that the currently-detained five former Khmer Rouge leaders are being threatened by illnesses as they are getting very old. Therefore, if the trial is still delayed, those people could die before being brought to justice.
Up to present, the Khmer Rouge tribunal has not received the fund it requested to the UN and the international community yet. It should be noticed that the tribunal has been heavily criticized for corruption allegations and that UNDP has carried out an audit in the tribunal to investigate the issue.
Unofficial Translation
-Extracted from Moneaksekar Khmer, vol. 15, #3488, Tuesday, June 17, 2002.
© 2005 All rights are reserved by Open Forum of Cambodia.