Have There Been Additional Suspects?

There has been a lot of gab in the press in the last two weeks about the resurgence of the issue of 'additional suspects'. Just when it finally started feeling that all that had to be said on the subject had been said pending the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC)'s adjudication of the issue. Regardless of how festooned and politically charged one might make it -- be he Prime Minister of Cambodia, a researcher or a journalist -- the issue is as simple as the PTC's lackluster performance which has effectively rendered it unable to respond to the relevant dispute resolution application submitted by the Co-Prosecutors in 2008. It is well understood that that the Cambodian judges --toeing Hun Sen's political line -- are prepared to come out as a united front; it is, however, the stipulation of the law which requires that they secure a vote of at least one of the two PTC's international judges which makes this an impasse. The Chamber could have issued an opinion --as opposed to a decision -- which de facto would have played into the hands of the International Co-Prosecutor who has been seeking to indict additional suspects. Instead, the International Co-Prosecutor decided to go ahead with the investigations regardless of the inaction of the PTC which he presently seeks to justify and turn this standoff into the de facto green light to prosecute in the void of the PTC's action to resolve the matter by the specific power vested in it. There are more questions than answers about whether the International Co-Prosecutor can do this solo, without his national counterpart. It is, however, clear that the PTC has to respond to this submission for dispute resolution sooner or later and stop playing the waiting game. Regardless of how much the International Co-Prosecutor will have accomplished by then, the Chamber will be able to kill it, if it manages a decision to this effect.