Khmer Rouge Tribunal

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Extraordinary Chambers at the Courts of Cambodia

Khmer Rouge Tribunal

Emblem of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

United Nations flag

Main building of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal
English name Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
French name Chambres Extraordinaires au sein des tribunaux cambodgiens
Organization type Ad hoc criminal court
Seat of the organs Phnom Penh , Cambodia
www.eccc.gov.kh

The Khmer Rouge Tribunal (also Khmer Rouge Tribunal , officially Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia ; English Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia , French Chambres Extraordinaires au sein des tribunaux cambodgiens ) is a hybrid criminal court modeled on the International Criminal Court for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha , which is to investigate and try the crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge during the genocide in Cambodia .

prehistory

On the initiative of the Vietnamese occupiers, a show trial of the two Khmer Rouge Pol Pot and Ieng Sary took place in Phnom Penh in August 1979 , which was led by Kaev Chenda, the Cambodian Minister for Propaganda and Information. They were sentenced to death in absentia . In 1996, Ieng Sary was given amnesty by the Hun Sen regime. Pol Pot died in 1998 without being arrested. In the same year the last Khmer Rouge surrendered.

As a result, two high-ranking Khmer Rouge were arrested in 1999:

  • General Ta Mok , who ousted Pol Pot in 1997 and was the last number 1 in the Khmer Rouge. He died of old age in prison in 2006.
  • Kaing Guek Eav ("Duch"), the former head of the S-21 Torture Center in Phnom Penh. Since his escape in 1979 he had been living under an assumed name in Cambodia and Thailand.

Before 2007, these were the only two inmates of the former 2,000-strong leadership of the Khmer Rouge.

A planned process was delayed for years. At first there was a conflict between the United Nations and the government in Cambodia over questions of the conference venue, the applicable procedural law and the content of the tribunal. The United States and the People's Republic of China in particular blocked the negotiations for a long time. On June 6, 2003, the United Nations and the Hun Sen government signed an agreement approved by the UN General Assembly. a. The following has been agreed: The court of the proposed tribunal will be composed of Cambodian and international judges, Cambodian procedural law will apply, and the court will be based in Phnom Penh. Although Cambodian judges have a majority, every decision must be supported by at least one foreign judge.

On October 4, 2004, 25 years after the events that the tribunal is supposed to punish, the Cambodian parliament passed a law that enables a United Nations-supported trial of the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge. On July 3, 2006, 27 judges of the tribunal, including ten foreign lawyers, were sworn in in a solemn ceremony.

organization

structure

The tribunal has a tripartite structure (pre-trial chamber, main professional chamber and appeal chamber), two investigative organs (prosecutor and investigating judge) and it has a court administration.

  • A Cambodian and an international co-investigating judge are responsible for carrying out the investigations.
  • One Cambodian and one international co-prosecutor are responsible for carrying out the prosecution
  • The Pre-Trial Chamber decides on disputes between the investigating judge and the prosecutor. It consists of three Cambodian and two international judges.
  • The Trial Chamber consists of three Cambodian and two international judges.
  • The Supreme Court Chamber is the final instance and consists of four Cambodian and three international judges.
  • The Office of Administration has a Cambodian head and an international head deputy. The deputy also heads the UN mission for the Khmer Rouge tribunal.

Jurisdiction

The jurisdiction of the tribunal is limited to certain crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge in the period from April 17, 1975 to January 6, 1979 (Article 1 of the ECCC Act). It can indict and condemn high-ranking leaders of the Democratic Kampuchea and those primarily responsible, in particular for genocide , crimes against humanity and serious offenses against the Geneva Convention of August 12, 1949 (Article 6 of the ECCC Act).

Finances

The cost of the proposed tribunal was originally estimated at $ 56.3 million (over a period of three years). By the end of 2012, $ 173.3 million had been spent. The total expenses to complete all legal proceedings are estimated by the tribunal at over $ 200 million.

So far Japan has contributed over 78 million US dollars, followed by Australia with 17 million, the USA with 15 million and Germany with almost 12 million US dollars in the costs of the tribunal. Cambodia paid approximately 4% of the total cost, almost $ 8 million in total.

Corruption allegations

In 2009, accusations of corruption against the tribunal received widespread international attention , according to which court staff had to agree to pay part of their salaries to senior management as a condition of their employment. In August 2009, in agreement with the United Nations, the position of an advisor was created to investigate the allegations. Previously, numerous international donors had frozen their financial contributions to the tribunal, which brought it to the brink of insolvency for a short time.

Processes

Completed process against Duch (process 001)

The investigation began in 2007 with the interrogation of Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch . The trial opened in February 2009. He was found guilty of killing at least 14,000 people. On July 26, 2010, he was sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment, which was immediately reduced from five years to 30 years for being illegally detained. He had already served eleven years at the time of the judgment. The public prosecutor appealed the verdict. In February 2012 the sentence was increased to life imprisonment in an appeal process .

Trial of four other defendants (trial 002)

On September 19, 2007 Nuon Chea , ex-chief ideologist of the Khmer Rouge, was arrested. He was picked up from his home in the Cambodian jungle by police after the Khmer Rouge tribunal issued an arrest warrant against him. Nuon Chea is thus the most senior defendant before the tribunal. On November 12, 2007, Ieng Sary and his wife, Ieng Thirith, were arrested and brought to the tribunal. A week later, the ex-head of state Khieu Samphan was also arrested in a hospital in Phnom Penh.

On September 16, 2010, charges were brought against all four. The trial began on June 27, 2011. The four defendants, aged between 79 and 85, did not show any outward feelings. After a few minutes, Nuon Chea said he was "not happy" with the hearing and left the room in protest, saying that his health was poor and he was cold.

On September 13, 2012, the court released Ieng Thirith for being unable to stand trial for dementia . However, she was under surveillance until her death on August 22, 2015. Ieng Sary died on March 14, 2013, before a conviction could be reached. The case against him has been dropped.

On August 7, 2014, the tribunal pronounced the verdict. The then 88-year-old Nuon Chea and the 83-year-old Khieu Samphan were sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity . They appealed against the judgment in September 2014. Samphan justified this with an unfair trial in which one relied on rumors and not on testimony and in which his influence was completely overestimated. Chea saw the trial as a propaganda trial in which key witnesses were not heard. The sentence was upheld as fair by the Supreme Court in November 2016.

Further investigations (procedures 003 and 004)

The suspects in the two preliminary investigations 003 and 004 are not yet officially known. In 2011, the British co-prosecutor accused the two co-investigating judges of inadequate investigations into other alleged perpetrators. According to the organization Human Rights Watch, they bowed to political pressure. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen had stated several times that he would not allow any further negotiations apart from the trials against the five ex-functionaries. The Tribunal's website only names dates for procedure 003 in 2019: Accordingly, the hearings in the preliminary proceedings are to begin at the end of November 2019.

literature

Documentaries

Web links

Commons : Khmer Rouge Tribunal  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Katja Dombrowski: Former military chief of the Khmer Rouge died. In: NZZ Online . July 22, 2006, accessed November 18, 2013 .
  2. ↑ Armin Wertz: Curse of the Dead Years. In: Friday . January 19, 2001, accessed October 13, 2013 .
  3. ↑ General Assembly resolution 57/228. Court proceedings against the Khmer Rouge on May 13, 2003 (PDF; 79 kB) (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on October 14, 2013 ; Retrieved October 13, 2013 .
  4. ↑ Katja Dombrowski: Judge sworn in for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. In: NZZ Online . Retrieved November 18, 2013 .
  5. ↑ a b ECCC Financial Outlook. In: unakrt-online.org , May 31, 2013 (English)
  6. ^ Establishment of an Independent Counselor at the Courts of Cambodia. In: CAAI News Media , August 13, 2009 (English)
  7. ↑ Ex-prison chief before the genocide tribunal in Cambodia. In: Spiegel Online , July 31, 2007
  8. ^ Sophie Mühlmann: Pol Pot's brutal executioner is now on trial. In: The world . February 17, 2009, accessed October 13, 2013 .
  9. ^ Judgment of July 26, 2010 (full text, English, 281 pages, 2.05 MB; PDF); see. Stern: Khmer Rouge chief of torture wants to appeal against prison sentence ( memento of October 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ Judgment of February 3, 2012 (full text, English, 350 pages, 3.13 MB; PDF); see. Life sentence for the chief of torture of the Khmer Rouge. In: Zeit Online , February 3, 2012
  11. ↑ Michael Lenz: Tribunal against the human butcher. In: Stern-online. November 19, 2007, accessed October 13, 2013 .
  12. ↑ a b Khmer Rouge in court - "Brother number two" awaits his punishment. In: Spiegel Online , June 27, 2011
  13. ↑ a b 4 ex-leaders of the Khmer Rouge indicted. In: taz , June 27, 2011
  14. ↑ All you need to know before Case 002/01 judgment. In: eccc.gov.kh , August 3, 2014, accessed on August 7, 2014
  15. ↑ Genocide tribunal condemns Khmer Rouge. In: n-tv.de , August 7, 2014
  16. ^ Lauren Crothers, Khmer Rouge leaders appeal life sentences for crimes against humanity. In: The Guardian , September 30, 2014, accessed November 23, 2016
  17. ↑ Cambodian court upholds life sentences for Khmer Rouge leaders. In: The Guardian , November 23, 2016, accessed November 23, 2016
  18. ↑ UN Tribunal again under fire. In: taz , June 26, 2011
  19. ^ Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia: Pre-Trial Chamber to hear arguments of parties in case 003
  20. ↑ Meike Fries: The murderers live in hiding in the country. Interview with Thet Sambath. In: The time . November 22, 2011, accessed October 13, 2013 .

Coordinates: 11 ° 31 ′ 13 ″  N , 104 ° 47 ′ 35 ″  E