Khieu Samphan had already been sentenced to life in 2014 – confirmed verdict on appeal in 2016 – for crimes against humanity committed during the forced evacuation of the inhabitants of Phnom Penh, in the first part of his river trial .
Le Monde with AFP
For his last decision before dissolution, the special court responsible for judging the Khmer Rouge for their atrocities confirmed on appeal the conviction to the life imprisonment for Khieu Samphan, last dignitary in life, for genocide, Thursday September 22 in Phnom Penh. The former head of state of the 91 -year -old democratic Kampuchéa, was also found guilty of crimes against humanity – murders, slavery, forced marriages, rapes – and serious violations of the Geneva conventions.
Khieu Samphan “had a direct knowledge of crimes and he shared the intention of committing them with the other participants of the common criminal enterprise” who killed nearly two million people between 1975 and 1979, recalled Judge Kong Srim. The accusations which aimed at it are associated with “some of the most hateful acts” of the ultra-maidist dictatorship, insisted the president of the Chamber of the Supreme Court.
Khieu Samphan attended the judgment, in the court, on his wheelchair, listening to the pronouncement of two and a half hours by a helmet. He was already sentenced to life in 2014 – confirmed verdict on appeal in 2016 – for crimes against humanity committed during the forced evacuation of the inhabitants of Phnom Penh, in the first part of his river trial, started in 2011 .
a “historic day”
Nearly 500 people, including families of victims, Buddhist monks and diplomats, attended the audience, a “historic day” according to the spokesman for the court Neth Pheaktra.
Khieu Samphan, one of the rare public faces of the regime, has always denied its involvement in the facts which are accused of, especially in the genocide against the Vietnamese. This accusation does not concern the massacres, were they of mass, khmers by the Khmers who are not considered by the United Nations as a genocide.
Khieu Samphan is the third Khmer Rouge dignitary to be condemned by this special courtyard, made up of Cambodian and international magistrates. Kaing Guek EAV, alias Douch, was sentenced to perpetuity for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The former torturer, head of the country’s most formidable detention center at the time, S21, died in 2020, at 77 years.
dissolution in three years
The judges inflicted the same sentence on Nuon Chea, the ideologist of the movement, for genocide, against the Vietnamese and the Muslims chams, and crimes against humanity. He died in August 2019 at the age of 93. “Brother number one”, Pol Pot, died in 1998, without being tried.
Extraordinary rooms in Cambodian courts (CETC) are now preparing to close their doors without having dissipated the controversies that have mine from the start. The abandonment in recent years of prosecution against three people accused of genocide or crimes against humanity recalled their fragility in a country led by a former Khmer Red Repentant, Hun Sen, who spoke out against any new trial Name of national stability.
Its cost, more than $ 330 million, relating to the number of convictions, has also fueled suspicions. His last brothel, the courtyard must dissolve in three years, after having finished its archiving work, among others.