Trial for Americans murdered 30 years ago convenes in Cambodia
Created: Jun 20, 2011
The families of four Americans brutally tortured and killed by a genocidal regime may finally see justice as the trial of the regime’s senior leaders convenes next week on the outskirts of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.
California yachtsmen James Clark and Lance McNamara were captured in April 1978 while sailing off the coast of Democratic Kampuchea—as Cambodia was called under the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge.
Two more Americans, Californian Michael Deeds, and Hawaii resident Christopher Delance were seized seven months later, under similar circumstances. All four were trucked off to a Khmer Rouge death house in Phnom Penh, codenamed S-21, tortured into confessing they were CIA agents, and finally killed. A New Zealander, an Englishman, and a pair of Australian yachtsmen suffered the same fate. A Canadian was shot and killed on his yacht.
The U.N.-backed Khmer Rouge Tribunal—formally known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)—handed down a 30-year prison sentence to S-21 chief Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, in July 2010, for crimes against humanity and genocide. Fourteen thousand Cambodians and almost a thousand foreigners perished under his watch.
On June 27, Democratic Kampuchea’s surviving senior leaders will face the tribunal for an initial hearing in its second case. One of these is a man named Ieng Sary. As the regime’s foreign minister, Sary helped guide a xenophobic and bloody struggle against neighboring communist Vietnam.
In the war-ravaged Gulf of Thailand, hundreds of Vietnamese refugees and fishers were arrested or killed, and the nine Western yachtsmen were seized.
Nuon Chea, Democratic Kampuchea’s security chief and premier ideologue—second in power to Pol Pot—was the one who ordered that the yachtsmen imprisoned at S-21 be killed and their bodies burned to ashes, Duch testified at his 2009 trial. In one of the trial’s most sensational moments, a former guard testified that one of the young men was burned alive. Duch denied the charge.
In the war-ravaged Gulf of Thailand, hundreds of Vietnamese refugees and fishers were arrested or killed, and the nine Western yachtsmen were seized.
The family and friends of the murdered yachtsmen are glad to see Nuon Chea and Ieng Sary face justice after so many years, but are dismayed by the possible dismissal of a third ECCC case involving unnamed Khmer Rouge chieftains.
Case 003
The former top commander of the navy platoon that captured the yachtsmen is widely believed to be among those under investigation in ECCC Case 003.
Meas Mut, a self-professed Buddhist, denies any knowledge of the yachtsmen’s murders. Mut “lies about virtually everything, as far as I can determine,” an informed tribunal observer quipped.
At the end of April, a pair of tribunal judges announced, without comment, that their two-year investigation of Case 003’s 48,000-page dossier is now complete, leading observers to conclude that the judges consider the case closed.
In early May, the tribunal’s Cambodian co-prosecutor declared that the acts of “murder, extermination, torture, unlawful imprisonment, enslavement, persecution, and other inhumane acts” outlined in the file are beyond the tribunal’s jurisdiction, since their alleged perpetrator was neither a senior leader nor the most responsible for the genocide as a whole.
The tribunal’s English co-prosecutor, Andrew Cayley, disagrees. In a May 9 media release, Cayley countered that the crimes alleged in the Case 003 file have not been fully investigated, and called upon the judges to interview alleged wrongdoers—something they have yet to do.
The judges in turn have reprimanded Cayley for revealing too much about the case, including one of the alleged charges: the “capture of foreign nationals off the coast of Cambodia and their unlawful imprisonment, transfer to S-21, or murder.” The judges now say that they will release “all relevant facts and assessments in a reasoned Closing Order.”
Observers predict the case will be dropped. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen—a former Khmer Rouge officer himself—has stated that people of Mut’s rank should not go on trial.
Political Influence
The U.S. government’s position on the matter is unclear. Since 2006, the United States has contributed almost $7 million to the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Japan and Australia are the ECCC’s most generous benefactors, with contributions of $55 million and $11 million respectively.
As ECCC Case 002 draws near, and Case 003 titters on the edge of dismissal, the family and friends of the murdered American yachtsmen have mixed feelings about seeking justice in the long-forgotten case.
“Watching the formation of this tribunal and the restrictions put on it, it became clear early on that the outcomes would be disillusioning. I have never invested in these courts for closure. I wouldn't allow my heart to be broken again,” says Don Bittner.
Roy Delong, who was friends with Canadian yachtsman Stuart Robert Glass, is more assertive in his view of the justice process unfolding thousands of miles away.
“[Meas Mut] isn’t someone we’d pursue to Pakistan and kill,” says Delong. “If you don’t pursue him, we might as well shut up. We sit here and talk high and mighty, preaching to others about human rights. Hey, one of our own citizens was killed. Let’s put the guy on trial.”
David Kattenburg is the author of “Foxy Lady: Truth, Memory and the Death of Western Yachtsmen in Democratic Kampuchea.”
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