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Ex-Khmer Rouge leader seeks release to 'safe house' during Cambodia genocide trial

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] A lawyer for former Khmer Rouge leader Kaing Guek Eav argued Wednesday that judges in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) should release Kaing, also known as "Duch," away from his four co-defendants into a separate "safe house. The request came a day after Kaing apologized for mass torture and murder. Defense lawyer Francois Roux said the continued detention of Kaing, who was arrested in 1999, violated Cambodia's three-year limit on "provisional detention" and asked the judges to consider the time already served in sentencing. Roux also questioned the appropriateness of housing Kaing with defendants he is likely to implicate with his testimony. Prosecutors opposed the proposal, citing the possibility of retaliatory attacks on Kaing by families of his victims and noting that the ECCC has held him only since 2007. Kaing lost a similar appeal of his pre-trial detention in 2007. His trial is the first of eight that the ECCC hopes to hear against former members of the Khmer Rouge, which has been accused of murdering 1.7 million Cambodians during its nearly four-year reign. The ECCC has long been plagued with accusations of corruption and inadequate funding, with greater problems in recent years. Earlier this month, the ECCC reported that it would be unable to pay its Cambodian employees for that month, one year after the court requested $114 million dollars from the UN. In February, Human Rights Watch warned that the ECCC trials were in danger of being tainted for their failure to follow fair trial standards, and in January a Cambodian court agreed to hear a corruption case involving two ECCC judges.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on April 01, 2009 (boomark / email).