The Khmer Rouge tribunal’s Supreme Court Chamber on Monday rejected an appeal from defendant Nuon Chea to investigate claims by a former investigating judge that the government was interfering in the tribunal’s work, dismissing the request as a mere stalling tactic.
Nuon Chea’s defense team first asked the tribunal’s Trial Chamber for an investigation in April, a month after Investigating Judge Laurent Kasper-Ansermet announced his resignation in a bitter statement accusing Cambodian counterpart You Bunleng of blocking his efforts to investigate two pending cases openly opposed by the government.
Rejected by the Trial Chamber, the lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court Chamber in December.
In its own rejection, the Supreme Court said the team’s request was too similar to past requests it had made that were also turned down and that Judge Kasper-Ansermet was only complaining about cases 003 and 004, not the case currently under way involving Nuon Chea, Case 002.
The Supreme Court Chamber also said the team’s request for a “full investigation” into how the alleged interference in two pending cases was affecting the fairness of the current case was too vague and aimed only at delaying the trial.
“In the absence of specificity as to what particular offensive conduct or outcome should be investigated, the defense essentially seeks to engage in an open-ended inquiry whose only purpose appears to be in creating a premise to halt the proceedings in Case 002,” it said.
“As such, the Supreme Court Chamber finds no error in the Trial Chamber’s conclusion that there is no reasonable basis to believe that interference may have occurred in the fairness of the proceedings of Case 002 sufficient to trigger its power to commence an investigation.”
The U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal has been plagued by claims of government interference from the start.
Prime Minister Hun Sen and other top government officials have repeatedly insisted that the tribunal would never get to hear cases 003 and 004, in which five mid-level Khmer Rouge leaders are accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Judge Bunleng, the tribunal’s Cambodian investigating judge, has repeatedly blocked efforts by his international counterparts to probe the cases.
