Two men suspected of being involved in the murder of a man 20 years ago were arrested at their homes in Banteay Meanchey province on Tuesday night and sent to the provincial court for questioning on Wednesday, officials said.
Phoeung Mang Sing, chief of the provincial serious crimes bureau, said that Liem Cheat, 50, and Pech Haing, 57, who live in Preah Netr Preah district’s Bos Sbov commune, were suspected of being accomplices to a premeditated murder in November 1995, but that the court did not issue a warrant for their arrest until last month.
“The warrant was just issued on September 9, so we just went to arrest them at their house where they have lived for a long time,” he said. “We just did it because the court issued [the warrant] for us to take action.”
Mr. Mang Sing said he did not know why it had taken the court so long to issue an arrest warrant, and that he did not know the name of the man who was murdered or any other details of the case.
“They committed the crime of killing someone in 1995 but I do not know why at the time they didn’t arrest them,” he said, adding that the family of the victim had filed a complaint to provincial police at the time of the murder.
Y Savinh, a judge at the provincial court, said that the suspects had been summoned to court three times over the past two decades but had failed to appear, with the most recent summons delivered in 2012.
“According to the document, the two were part of a group that conspired to kill a man but they were not the main suspect, who is still at large,” Mr. Savinh said, adding that identifying the two men had required a lengthy investigation.
“During the case, the investigating judge spent a lot of time speaking with many witnesses trying to find enough people who could identify the two,” he said.
Mr. Savinh said that questioning of Mr. Cheat and Mr. Haing would continue today.
