Court ruling next week on KRouge leader release

December 6, 2011

PHNOM PENH: Cambodia’s UN-backed tribunal will decide next week whether to free the Khmer Rouge’s former “First Lady” after she was deemed unfit for trial because of dementia, the court said Tuesday.

Judges last month ordered Ieng Thirith, 79, the only female genocide suspect charged by the court, to be released unconditionally after medical experts said she suffers from memory loss and most likely has Alzheimer’s disease.

Prosecutors immediately appealed against the move, putting the matter in the hands of the court’s highest appeal body, the supreme court chamber, which originally had 15 days to reach a final decision.

That deadline has now been extended by a week until December 13 after judges said they were dealing with an “unprecedented” matter.

“The supreme court chamber has decided that exceptional circumstances exist in the present case, including the complexity arising from the unprecedented legal and practical issues involved,” a court statement said.

Despite the appeal over her release, it is considered highly unlikely that Ieng Thirith will now have to answer to charges of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity as experts said her condition was unlikely to improve.

Yet freeing Ieng Thirith — who was Pol Pot’s sister-in-law — would likely dismay Khmer Rouge survivors still haunted by the horrors of the 1975-1979 regime, blamed for the deaths of up to two million people.

Led by “Brother Number One” Pol Pot, who died in 1998, the Khmer Rouge wiped out nearly a quarter of the Cambodian population, through starvation, overwork and execution in a bid to create an agrarian utopia.

The ruling on Ieng Thirith’s fitness last month came just days before the start of her long-awaited trial alongside three other senior regime leaders — including her husband and former foreign minister Ieng Sary.

The four suspects — which also include “Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea and ex-head of state Khieu Samphan — have been held at a purpose-built detention centre since 2007 on the same charges.

The trial of the remaining three defendants began hearing evidence on Monday, when Nuon Chea, 85, said the Khmer Rouge were not “bad people” and instead blamed the Vietnamese for the mass killings under the regime.

On Tuesday, the former deputy leader answered questions for just over an hour before the court granted his request to be excused because of high blood pressure and fatigue, underscoring the health concerns that hang over the trial of the elderly accused.

-AFP