The lawyer for a woman accused of plotting a grenade attack to kill her former boyfriend said during the second day of her trial on Friday that there was no evidence to support the charges, despite incriminating testimony from her alleged accomplices.
Sok Kimly, 38, charged with initiating premeditated murder, is accused of arranging the failed attempt to kill her former boyfriend, Ea Lyhour, in Phnom Penh’s busy Chamkar Mon district in September. Four alleged accomplices are also charged in the plot, in which three people were injured.
“If my client, Sok Kimly, ordered the murder, where is the evidence, such as a contract offering the money, a voice recording or photos?” her lawyer, Suy Sokhon, asked the Phnom Penh Municipal Court.
But her co-defendant, Sak Mab, 36, testified that he had been hired to carry out the hit. “I saw at the time the area was quiet, then I just threw the grenade,” he said.
Mr. Lyhour, who owned a motorbike accessory store just meters from the grenade blast site, was unhurt in the attack.
The judge also questioned Ms. Kimly’s former employees, who were convicted and sentenced to 10 years in June alongside Ms. Kimly over an earlier plot in 2015 to kill Mr. Lyhour.
“Sok Kimly ordered me to find and shoot her boyfriend,” Ni Soi Binh, 36, told the court on Friday.
Deputy prosecutor Soeur Vanny said the evidence supported the charges.
“After listening to the answers from the defendants, Ms. Sok Kimly is the mastermind to hire people for the attempt to kill her boyfriend,” she said.
According to police, Ms. Kimly had previously said she ordered the hit because Mr. Lyhour owed her $50,000 and had an affair. On the first day of her trial on Thursday, however, she retracted the confession and denied that she had hired anyone to kill Mr. Lyhour.
Two of her co-defendants, Mr. Mab and Bun Pheakdey, 32, are accused of being hired to carry out the hit. Nou Samban, 33, a motorcycle-taxi driver who allegedly introduced Mr. Pheakdey to Mr. Mab, and 25-year-old Bou Sopheap, Mr. Pheakdey’s mistress, are charged as accomplices in premeditated murder.
The verdict is expected on September 4.
