'No One is Free From Prosecution'

After years of procrastination, argument and tough negotiations between Phnom Penh and the United Nations, officials are now confident the start of the tribunal to try members of the country's brutal former Khmer Rouge regime is just weeks away.

King Norodom Sihamoni announced the names last week of the judges and prosecutors - 17 locals and 13 foreigners - who will jointly preside over the extraordinary chambers in the courts of Cambodia, as the tribunal is formally called.
Prosecutors are expected to start work towards the end of June and the first trials are predicted to begin early next year.

The prosecutors, one of whom is Cambodian and one foreign, will have complete freedom to determine how many of the fanatical communist movement that ruled Cambodia form 1975 to 1979 will be investigated. During the Khmer Rouge's four years in power an estimated 1.7 million people out of a national population of some 7.1 million were either killed or died of starvation.

"The planning figure is five to 10 [defendants] but we can't anticipate the prosecutors' strategy on this," tribunal spokesperson Helen Jarvis told Guardian Unlimited. "It will be completely in their hands."

Pol Pot, the regime's leader who was known as Brother Number One, died in 1998. Only two former leaders, Ta Mok and Kang Keng Ieu, dubbed Duch, are in detention on genocide charges. Brother Number Two Nuon Chea, the former head of state Khieu Samphan and the former foreign minister and Brother Number Three Ieng Sary are the most prominent Khmer Rouge members living freely in Cambodia but all pardons and promises of immunity now count for nothing.

"No one is free from prosecution," Ms Jarvis said. "That is what the word extraordinary in the title means."

Cambodia's current prime minister, Hun Sen, was a junior Khmer Rouge cadre but it is thought to be highly unlikely he will be prosecuted.

The tribunal will be based on the justice system of France, Cambodia's former colonial power. The prosecutors will prepare a "request for information" for the two investigating judges - one of whom is Cambodian and one foreign.

Their role, according to Ms Jarvis, is "more akin to a grand jury [in the United States] or a pre-trial evaluation". "It's their job to see if there's enough evidence to go to a full trial," she said.

Two of the major stumbling blocks have been jurisdiction and funding. Fearing Cambodia's notoriously corrupt justice system and its poorly trained workers would not deliver trials of international standards, the UN refused to allow the host nation to control proceedings. The final compromise involves panels where the majority of judges are Cambodian but no verdict can be reached without the agreement of at least one international judge.

Much of the delay in recent years has been over funding the £30.5m tribunal. It was eventually agreed that the UN would cover £23.25m and Cambodia the rest, but within weeks Hun Sen reneged on the deal and asked donors, who already provide almost half the Cambodian government's budget, to stump up £5.2m of his nation's £7.2m share of the costs.

Ms Jarvis said the tribunal is still up to £2.7m short. "But we've got sufficient [funds] for the first two years and [the shortfall] is not regarded as an impediment to proceeding."

The huge unknown is whether the tribunal will both deliver justice and provide closure for a nation where virtually no one survived unscathed by the brutality and barbarity of the ruling class.

"For years we thought nothing was going to happen, that the talk of the tribunal was just that, talk," said taxi driver Khieu Moha. "Now it seems that trials really are going to happen. Everyone wants justice even though the killing happened more than 25 years ago. Let's hope this court can give us something."