The case might have appeared clear cut.
Former RCAF colonel Sath Soeun, whose violent reputation earned him infamy and then ignominy in the 1990s, had confessed to police. The victim had given corroborating testimony.
But by the time Kompong Cham Provincial Court Judge Sim Kuch called a recess on Tuesday morning, Sath Soeun looked set to beat another conviction.
Even though the crime could be considered only an attempt, the court clerk read out the charge as voluntary manslaughter, for the gun shot fired the night of Feb 8.
Victim of the attack, RCAF Lieutenant Colonel Thach Vannarith, was in court on Tuesday recanting his earlier accusations.
“I ask Sath Soeun to pay $4,500 for damages. I would like to stop this case and drop the charges,” he told the court.
Then Sath Soeun said the two men had met at a wedding the night of the shooting, how his table had consumed four bottles of Johnny Walker whiskey, how he and Thach Vannarith had slurped whiskey from cupped palms in a show of brotherhood.
“I was really drunk,” he said.
Driving home together on Sath Soeun’s motorbike, they stopped to urinate on the side of the road. That’s when Sath Soeun’s K-59 pistol fell from his vest and went off, Sath Soeun said.
Sath Soeun said when he saw his wounded companion he paniced, fled and tossed his pistol in the Mekong River.
During the court recess, Thach Vannarith hedged on his earlier pronouncement. “Even though I asked for money, the offense he committed is still there. He should be prosecuted according to the law,” he told a reporter.
If Thach Vannarith had been intimidated by Sath Soeun, he would not be the first. In the past, police officials have cited fear for their own safety as the reason Sath Soeun’s brutality went unpunished.
Never mind that Sath Soeun, the man known as Soeun Phen Dai, or Master of the Earth, stands at only about a meter-and-a-half. Or that he walks with his sloped shoulders hunched around a low-slung head. Or that his arms look limp and lank.
In 1994, Sath Soeun was arrested for the alleged murder of a journalist who had worked on a story on military involvement in illegal logging in Kompong Cham. He was acquitted May 19, 1995.
In July 1995, Kompong Cham police said Sath Soeun shot an unarmed boy, an alleged thief, in the stomach. The boy was alive when police arrived, but Sath Soeun quelled cries for medical attention with two more bullets.
Sath Soeun is said to have beaten and murdered many others. Aside from relatively brief detentions, he always walked free.
Stories kept cropping up until RCAF dismissed him for dereliction of duty in 1998.
According to Lak Leang, Kompong Cham Military Police deputy commander, who called Sath Soeun a “scary gangster,” the Master of the Earth has lived modestly and without work in recent years.
Kompong Cham Governor Cheang Am pays $800 a month for Sath Soeun’s palatial villa in Kompong Cham town, said Lak Leang.
A guard at the villa said Monday that Sath Soeun’s two tigers and a crocodile were shipped down to Tamao zoo a few years ago.
But Sath Soeun said during Tuesday’s court recess that he had mortgaged the property off to a wealthy Phnom Penh businessman for $300,000, so as to make his own business.
Asked what kind of business, Sath Soeun confirmed that he was still involved in his profession of choice—the illegal timber trade.
Then the court reconvened, and Sim Kuch delayed his verdict. He called for further investigation, because of “differences and irregularities” in statements given to police and the court.
The case will return to court after the Khmer New Year and the charge against Sath Soeun may be reduced to “assault and injury,” as the lawyers of both parties called for, Sim Kuch said.
