“Did someone order you to shoot Om Radsady?”
“No. No one stands behind me.”
So both suspects in the slaying of Funcinpec adviser and lawmaker Om Radsady told Municipal Court Judge Tan Senarong Monday morning before he sentenced them each to 20 years in Prey Sar prison.
Tan Senarong repeatedly urged the suspects—RCAF paratroopers Mom Siphan, 30, and Ros Siphat, 29—to speak honestly about the Feb 18 killing, and they repeatedly said they killed Om Radsady for his mobile telephone.
As Mom Siphan told it, the attack was spontaneous. He and Ros Siphat had left his house intending to buy lunch when, driving down Street 9 south of Sihanouk Boulevard at about 2 pm, Mom Siphan spotted a man with a mobile phone leaving Kab Kor Restaurant, he said.
Mom Siphan said he told Ros Siphat, who was driving the Honda AX-1 motorcycle, to circle back. Mom Siphan said he dismounted, approached the man with the phone and drew his K-54 pistol.
Mom Siphan recalled the man crying, “Thief!” as he reached for the phone.
Mom Siphan grabbed the man’s collar and, with the muzzle about half a meter from its target, shot him in the back.
Mom Siphan fled but his getaway driver sent him back to get the phone, he said, concurring with earlier eyewitness accounts.
Doctors said Om Radsady bled to death at Calmette Hospital about three hours later.
At the time, members and leaders of Funcinpec and the Sam Rainsy Party and foreign diplomats said the killing was an
assassination intended to silence dissident voices. The government’s top law enforcement officials vowed to find the killers and bring them to justice.
Mom Siphan and Ros Siphat both said they realized their victim’s identity when they noticed a sticker on the cell phone that depicted Om Radsady beside King Norodom Sihanouk. Despite previously having told police that they sold the phone, they told the court Monday that they tossed it off the Monivong Bridge into the Tonle Bassac river.
There were other inconsistencies. The two men claimed to have committed their first robbery that day, but their attorney, reading their confession to police, said they each had committed more than 10 robberies, mostly purse and necklace snatchings.
Mom Siphan had previously told police that he had aimed the gun at Om Radsady. On Monday he said he had tried to fire the gun into the ground to warn off Om Radsady’s companions.
Mom Siphan said he went home from the barracks to change into civilian clothes before they committed the crime. Ros Siphat said they both were in civilian dress at the barracks.
Ros Siphat said he was wearing a hat that day, not the motorcycle helmet on the evidence table.
But despite the grilling by Tan Senarong and Prosecutor Khut Sopheng, the defendants appeared carefree. They joked and laughed during the recess preceding the verdict.
Asked by a reporter if he was concerned about the verdict, Mom Siphan said, “I am not worried. That was an unlucky day.”
The two looked more alarmed minutes later as they were handed 20 years for robberies committed during 2002 and 2003, the intentional killing of Om Radsady and illegal use of a weapon.
The prosecutor had asked for only 10 to 15 years.
“I am very shocked they punished us more than the law says,” said Ros Siphat. “I will appeal to NGOs for justice.”
Few observers could be reached for comment after the trial, but opposition parliamentarian Son Chhay voiced skepticism.
He suggested that Om Radsady’s true killer is still at large and described the investigation as “quite strange, really strange.”
We never understand how the government comes to know about the person who did the killing…. What happened is just a show,” he said.
