PHNOM PENH: Cambodia’s UN-backed Khmer Rouge war crimes court gave its final verdict on Thursday (Sep 22), upholding the genocide conviction plus life sentence imposed on the regime’s final surviving leader.
The tribunal was ruling with an appeal by Khieu Samphan, head of state for the murderous communist regime, which wiped out a quarter from the Cambodian population in less than four years within the 1970s.
It is the last verdict that will be issued by the tribunal, which has cost more than US$330 million plus prosecuted only 5 Khmer Rouge market leaders, two of whom died during process.
“The Best Court chamber discovers no merit within Khieu Samphan’s arguments regarding genocide plus rejects them, ” Chief Judge Kong Srim said within the lengthy ruling.
The court also upheld the 2018 convictions against the 91-year-old for multiple criminal offenses against humanity : including murder, pain and enslavement – on the basis of a “joint criminal enterprise”, even when he did not individually take part in all offences.
It backed the earlier ruling that Khieu Samphan had “direct contemporaneous understanding of the commission associated with crimes and contributed the intent for their commission”.
But it reversed convictions on murder and persecution charges relating to 2 specific locations.
‘HEINOUS’ CRIMES
The hybrid court, with both Cambodian plus international judges, was set up to try the senior leaders of the genocidal ultra-Maoist regime, which wiped out some 2 million people through starvation, pain, forced labour plus mass executions throughout its rule in 1975 to 1979.
Regime chief Pol Pot, known as “Brother Number One”, never faced proper rights, dying in 1998 before the court had been set up.
The genocide conviction relates to the persecution associated with ethnic-minority Vietnamese, noticed by the Khmer Rouge as treacherous enemies within.
Judge Kong Srim mentioned the charges associated with “some of the most heinous events” during the Khmer Rouge’s blood-soaked principle.
The frail Khieu Samphan sitting hunched in a wheelchair in the dock, listening intently to the lengthy ruling through headphones.
His debate that the Khmer Rouge was simply a politics movement, aimed at enhancing the lives associated with Cambodians, was turned down by the court.
“By no stretch out of the imagination could it be seriously stated how the CPK revolution had been implemented in a charitable or altruistic manner, ” the ruling said, using an decrease for the Communist Celebration of Kampuchea, the Khmer Rouge’s public name.
Some 500 people loaded into the courtroom to hear the verdict, which includes Khmer Rouge survivors, Buddhist monks, diplomats and government authorities.
“I wish justice for all victims because we experienced so much. The Pol Pot regime was so brutal, inch survivor You Soeun, 67, told AFP.
HISTORIC FUNCTION
Alongside Khieu Samphan in the 2018 case, “Brother Quantity Two” Nuon Chea was also sentenced to our lives for genocide as well as other crimes, including pressured marriages and rapes.
Nuon Chea died in 2019.
Both males were given life phrases by the court in 2014 for crimes against humanity in another case associated with the violent pushed evacuation of Phnom Penh in 04 1975, when Khmer Rouge troops drove the population of the funds into rural work camps.
The only real other person convicted by the special courtroom was Kaing Guek Eav, better generally known as Duch, head from the notorious S-21 pain interrogation centre where about 18, 1000 people were murdered.
Duch also died several years after getting convicted.
While the tribunal, formally known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), has guaranteed few convictions, professionals say it has accomplished valuable work in promoting national reconciliation.
“The ECCC is internationally recognised as a model hybrid courtroom for the prosecution associated with crimes and massacres, and has gradually become a model court that several countries think about creating in a comparable fashion, ” Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Bin Chinn informed reporters after the verdict.