After genocide conviction, Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge tribunal is done, minister says

Last two surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge were convicted on Friday

Deputy Prime Minister Sar Kheng said the tribunal’s work had been completed and there would not be any additional prosecutions

Reading Time:2 minutes

Members of the Trial Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia announce the verdicts against former Khmer Rouge leaders Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea. Photo: EPA

Published: 10:18am, 19 Nov 2018Updated: 8:22pm, 19 Nov 2018

Cambodia has reiterated it intends to end the work of the UN-backed tribunal that last week convicted the last two surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Deputy Prime Minister Sar Kheng said the tribunal’s work had been completed and there would not be any additional prosecutions for acts that led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people in the 1970s. The only other person convicted was the regime’s prisons chief.

He cited the terms under which the tribunal, staffed jointly by Cambodian and international prosecutors and judges, had been established, limiting its targets to senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime that was in power from 1975 to 1979. The rules also allow prosecuting those most responsible for carrying out atrocities.

Former Khmer Rouge Deputy Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea Nuon Chea and former Khmer Rouge Head of State Khieu Samphan in the courtroom of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Photo: EPA

Sar Kheng spoke on Saturday at a government ceremony in the northern province of Oddar Meanchey and his remarks were reported Sunday.

On Friday, the tribunal convicted and gave life sentences to Nuon Chea, 92, the main Khmer Rouge ideologist and right-hand man to its late leader Pol Pot, and Khieu Samphan, 87, who was the regime’s head of state. The sentences were merged with the life sentences they were already serving after an earlier conviction for crimes against humanity.