An unidentified assailant threw a grenade into the house of the Kompong Thom provincial court clerk early Monday morning, wounding a relative of the clerk and killing a dog, police said Monday.
The clerk, Chou Sarin, was not injured in the incident.
“I don’t know why people threw a grenade into my house,” Chou Sarin said Monday. “I don’t have any disputes with people.”
Chou Sarin said that since he often deals with people who lose court cases, he might have been targeted by someone who was unhappy with a court decision.
Chou Sarin is a close aide to Kompong Thom provincial Court Director Touch Sakhoeun. The attack occurred at 2:30 am in Stung Sen district, Kompong Thom province, Deputy Police Chief Him Sithim said.
He said the clerk’s 64-year-old mother-in-law was hit in the ribs by a piece of shrapnel from the grenade. She is recovering at a local hospital.
Although the shrapnel remains imbedded in her, she was not seriously wounded, Chou Sarin said.
He said a dog was killed by shrapnel.
“This attack was born from an act of revenge,” Him Sithim said, suggesting that the assailant might have been unhappy with a court case that Chou Sarin was involved in.
Police have some preliminary information but are waiting to conduct a full investigation before releasing more information, he said. No arrests have been made.
An official from the local human rights group Adhoc said that attacks against court officials are rare.
In 2000, Kandal province Court Clerk Bou Meng and his wife were shot to death in an incident that police at the time described as a revenge killing.
In 1997 a Pursat provincial court junior judge was beaten by military police and, in another 1997 incident, a grenade exploded at the house of an appeals court judge in Phnom Penh.
