Case 003 and 004 heading to the dumpster, as Hun Xen ordered? U.N.justice committed in the KR Tribunal?

Meas Muth (L) and Theary Seng (R)

ECCC Co-Investigating Judges: Bandit You Bunleng (L) and Herr Doktor Siegfried Blunk (R)

03 May 2011
KI-Media

The Cambodia Daily reported in its 02 May edition that the way the ECCC is handling the announcement of the closure of the investigation of Case 003 – “at the close of business before a holiday weekend” – is consistent with the judges’ plan to dismiss this case in which as many as 100,000 victims were involved.

The Cambodia Daily also reported the opposition to the case by Chea Leang, the court’s Cambodian co-prosecutor and niece of Sok An – Hun Xen’s right hand man. In a confidential pleading, Chea Leang wrote that Sou Met and Meas Muth “worked under the orders of their superior, Son Sen. Moreover, Meas Mut and Sou Met did not have the power to order executions or torture or commit crimes against the victims because all decision to execute, torture or commit crimes were made by their superior. Therefore Sou Met and Meas Mut do not fall into the category of senior leaders or those most responsible.” On this issue, Chea Leang was in fact championing the Cambodian government’s position whose leader, Hun Xen, told Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-general, during his visit to Cambodia that he does not want to see this case proceeding forward.

According to The Cambodia Daily, the UN side for Chea Leang is of the opposite view. Evidence gathered by Alex Bates, then senior assistant prosecutor, indicated that “at least 299 of [Sou] Met’s subordinates in Central Committee Division 502, which was based at the Phnom Penh airport, had been delivered in the hands of Duch.” Furthermore, in letters exchanged between Sou Met and Duch, Alex Bates accused Sou met of “directing the interrogation under torture of S-21 detainees, seeking to know whether they had made full ‘confessions’ and of compiling and referring lists of ‘traitors’ to the secret police for execution,” The Daily reported. In other letters sent to Duch, Sou Met personally implicated others as “enemy”.

Although Duch claimed that the letters were written by Son Sen under Sou Met’s name, nevertheless Alex Bates’ records showed that “Sou Met was ‘taking initiative’ to advance the policy of purge created by the military’s General Staff and the party.”

Stephen Heder and Brian Tittermore’s legal study also showed that both Meas Mut and Sou Met “had been made aware of Khmer Rouge policies of execution and bore responsibility for advancing them.”

With the large amounts of records and evidence gathered against Meas Muth and Sou Met, dismissing Case 003 “would be totally unjust,” Rob Hamill, a New Zealander who lost his brother to the Khmer Rouge secret police and who sought to join as civil party to Case 003, wrote The Daily. On her part, Theary Seng, a human rights activist who was the first person who applied to be a civil party to Case 003, said that “the closure of the case was ‘very disturbing’”.

With justice for almost 100,000 victims at stake, one has to wonder who is "reckless " in this case: the person who filed to be a civil party to the case or a tribunal whose potential dismissal of the case would handsomely do the bidding of the Second Generation of Khmer Rouge Leaders?