5 defendants proposed in mass killings in Cambodia

BANGKOK: Prosecutors in Cambodia announced Wednesday that they had submitted to a special tribunal a list of five potential defendants in a long-delayed trial for the mass killings by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s.

Although the five names were not made public, the submission was one of the most significant leaps forward in a case involving crimes committed more than 20 years ago. It has been delayed by legal and political disputes for a decade.

Under the tribunal's rules, the evidence will now be studied by investigating judges who will then decide on any formal indictments.

"This is the moment the victims have been waiting for," said Youk Chhang, who directs a documentation center that has collected some of the strongest evidence. "This is a turning point toward justice."

The radical communist Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, when 1.7 million people were killed by torture, disease, overwork and starvation.

The Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998, and his military chief, Ta Mok, died in 2006, but a number of elderly former leaders are living quietly in Cambodia. Only one is in custody.

No Khmer Rouge leader has ever been brought into court to face charges for crimes that resulted in the deaths of as many as one-fourth of the population and left the country in ruin and trauma.

The announcement Wednesday said the prosecutors had submitted for investigation 25 "distinct factual situations of murder, torture, forcible transfer, unlawful detention, forced labor and religious, political and ethnic persecution."

It listed allegations that it said constitute crimes against humanity, genocide, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, homicide, torture and religious persecution.

While names were not disclosed Wednesday, a half-dozen former leaders have often been mentioned as the most likely defendants.

They include Nuon Chea, the movement's chief ideologue; Khieu Samphan, the former head of state, and Ieng Sary, the former foreign minister, all of whom were members of the Khmer Rouge central committee.

Kaing Khek Iev, also known as Duch, the commandant of the main torture house, Tuol Sleng, is the only major figure in custody, but not under the jurisdiction of the special tribunal.

The mandate of the tribunal is to prosecute senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge movement as well as those "most responsible" for the crimes. There is no limit to the number of cases that can be brought.

The prosecutors' announcement described the Khmer Rouge atrocities as a criminal enterprise with far-reaching political aims.

"These crimes were committed as part of a common criminal plan constituting a systematic and unlawful denial of basic rights," they said. "The purported motive of this common criminal plan was to effect a radical change of Cambodian society along ideological lines."

In support of their submissions, the prosecutors said they had transmitted more than 1,000 documents totaling more than 14,000 pages of evidence. Large troves of files have been uncovered over the years, some with meticulous records of tortures and killings.

The documents include the statements of more than 350 witnesses, a list of 40 other potential witnesses, thousands of pages of Khmer Rouge government documents and the locations of more than 40 undisturbed mass graves, the statement said.

The tribunal, set up jointly by the United Nations and the Cambodian government, is a complex balancing act between Cambodian and foreign judges and lawyers, and between Cambodian and international standards of justice.

It has been criticized by some human rights groups for falling below those international standards and leaving room for political manipulation by the Cambodian leader, Prime Minster Hun Sen.

Cambodian and foreign judges have teamed together at all levels of the process, with decisions carefully calibrated by a supermajority system intended to resolve disputes between the two camps.

The submission Wednesday was made by two co-prosecutors, a Canadian and a Cambodian, and is now in the hands of co-investigating judges.

The cultures and legal systems clashed earlier this year in a stalemate between Cambodian and foreign judges over procedural rules, and the atmosphere between the two camps was described by participants as acrimonious.

The dispute, which involved national pride as well as legal standards, was the latest of many delays since Cambodia formally sought the help of the United Nations in 1997 to set up an international tribunal.

Because of delays, one year has already passed since the tribunal was inaugurated and only two years remain on its mandate, budgeted at $53 million. Experts said that could be extended if progress was being made.

Earlier on Wednesday, the tribunal announced another step forward - the inauguration of a small, red-roofed detention building, ready to receive any defendants once they are indicted.