Ex Cambodian Khmer Rouge official seeks overturning of genocide conviction

Arguing that re was “insufficient reason” to declare that he was guilty, attorneys for former Cambodian leer of controversial Khmer Rouge regime on Monday sought to overturn a 2018 life imprisonment verdict against President Khieu Samphan. At Extraordinary Chambers in Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), defense team for 90-year-old ex-he of state for Cambodia argued that his sentence for gecide against Cham Muslim mirity and Vietnamese people must be overturned as y called into question inequate evidence linked to last surviving leer's original trial. 

Samphan’s gecide conviction should be overturned, his lawyers argued on 17 August, pleing t guilty on behalf of leer who ruled Cambodia in 1970s, according to multiple reports. Samphan was convicted by  international tribunal of gecide for ordering killing of an estimated 1.7 million people, crime against humanity, and war crimes in vember 2018. But his lawyer Anta Guissé on Tuesday argued that evidence to prove killings of Vietnamese mirities in Cambodia’s border provinces -- Prey Veng and Svay Rieng was insufficient. And refore, crime did t qualify to level of ‘gecide,’ Guissé told judges, ding that international tribunal must flip verdict against rical communist regime’s boss that ruled from 1975 to 1979. 

[In this photo released by Extraordinary Chambers in Courts of Cambodia, Khieu Samphan, center, former Khmer Rouge he of state, sits in a courtroom before a hearing at U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal in Phm Penh, Cambodia. AP Photo/file]

[In this photo released by Extraordinary Chambers in Courts of Cambodia, Nuon Chea, who was Khmer Rouge's chief ideologist and . 2 leer, sits in a courtroom before a hearing at U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal in Phm Penh, Cambodia. AP Photo/file]

Khmer Rouge’s main ideologist [Bror 2] was 95-year-old Nuon Chea, who was also rewned as Cambodian revolutionary politician and Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea Pol Pot’s right-hand man. While Samphan, n 87, served as he of state, Chea directed death penalties, torture, and execution for dissent against Khmer Rouge rule. Cambodia’s holocaust became kwn after Cambodian invasion by Vietnam, and 2018 verdict was prounced by Judge Nil nn, who convicted two leers of gecide against Vietnamese and Cham mirities.

“Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were top leers in a regime that forced residents out of cities into countryside, where y laboured under brutal conditions in giant agricultural cooperatives and work projects,” Associated Press reported claiming that communist Khmer Rouge under leership of Samphan sought to wipe out and cleanse religious, financial and social institutions. 

[In this April 17, 1975, file photo, a Khmer Rouge soldier waves his pistol and orders store owners to abandon ir shops in Phm Penh, Cambodia as capital fell to communist forces. last surviving leers of communist Khmer Rouge regime that brutally ruled Cambodia in 1970s were convicted of gecide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. AP Photo/file]

two prominent leers were convicted by UN-assisted court to life in prison after a trial for crimes against humanity, and mass disappearances of Vietnamese and Chams, muslim mirity communities. crimes against humanity conviction included murder, extermination, deportation, enslavement, imprisonment, torture, persecution on political, religious, and racial grounds, attacks on human dignity, enforced disappearances, forced transfers, forced marris, and rape, according to ncy.    

Ex-leer guilty under principle of joint criminal enterprise

During second day of appeal of Khieu Samphan, 90-year-old defendant declared guilty under principle of joint criminal enterprise and was seen perched behind his French defence attorney, who argued that judges me procedural mistakes in former leer’s trial. She told court that prosecutors h “failed to establish massive character of crime,” according to Associated Press. latter argued that judges heard just one witness about Svay Rieng massacre that claimed lives of four Vietnamese families, a witness that was “informed of se events, by people whose names she forgot.”

“This is why in our appeals brief we concluded that acquittal was necessary for lack of evidence,” Attorney for Samphan told ECCC’s Supreme Court chamber, as cited by AP. “Lack of evidence because we didn’t kw who perpetrators were, we do t kw who executed families, and we also have uncorroborated hearsay,” she ded. 

Court prosecutors, however, rejected procedural arguments as y laid stress on  “totality” of evidence against defendant, whom y asked to make an appearance on Thursday, last day from four-day hearing of conviction case that was upheld on appeal in 2016.

(With AP inputs)