The Council of Ministers on Friday quickly amended the draft Khmer Rouge trial law, eliminating a provision for the death penalty and opening the way for a final round of debate on the oft-stalled legislation.
The maximum punishment now allowed under the draft law for former Khmer Rouge leaders convicted in the tribunal will be life imprisonment. The Cambodian Constitution does not allow the death penalty.
Currently only former Khmer Rouge commander Ta Mok and former Tuol Sleng prison director Duch are in custody. Their trials will be the first conducted, Prime Minister Hun Sen said Friday, adding that opening arguments for the tribunal could begin as early as year’s end.
But the draft law will have to first be sent back to parliament for debate, before again going before the Constitutional Council, which in February discovered the flawed article and forced the draft to be returned to government lawyers.
Hun Sen said King Norodom Sihanouk could sign the legislation by September and set in motion perhaps the country’s most anticipated legal proceedings of the last two decades.
“We must hurry…to finish this nightmare history so that [the Khmer Rouge] will not haunt us any longer,” Hun Sen said, expressing the widely held concerns that Ta Mok and Duch may die in prison before they can be brought to trial.
It’s unclear if any other former Khmer Rouge leaders—many of whom live openly in Cambodia—will be brought to court.
Despite the government’s apparent will to now hold a Khmer Rouge trial as quickly as possible, draft tribunal legislation only recently emerged after years of failed negotiations between Cambodia and the UN over how much foreign control will be exerted over the proceedings.
In a recent interview opposition leader Sam Rainsy predicted Hun Sen will continue to block the tribunal, which observers say is unpopular with China—an increasingly important patron of Cambodia.
