A weekend attack on a Sangkum Jatiniyum Front Party office in Phnom Penh that left a party member injured was likely a political assault, SJF leader Prince Sisowath Thomico said Monday.
“It’s quite difficult for me to believe it’s not politically motivated,” he said.
Local police officials dismissed the claim and say the attack was gang related.
Ek Chantha, a SJF national council member and a former Khmer Front Party board director, said eight people stormed his office Saturday night in Russei Keo district, attempting to break down the door.
He said that his family successfully barred the door.
But his nephew and fellow SJF member, Sok Sopheak, was trapped outside and the thugs beat Sok Sopheak unconscious. Sok Sopheak was hospitalized, but released Sunday with three stitches to his head and a badly bruised face.
Ek Chantha said the attack came a day after he had informed neighbors that he intended to hang an SJF sign above the office door. “It was politically motivated because Sok Sopheak didn’t know the group,” Ek Chantha said, adding that the attackers also shouted out about “a front.”
Ek Chantha’s son, Ek Veasna, corroborated his father’s account of the attack but said that Sok Sopheak knew some of the attackers.
Tin Lalin, Kilometer 6 commune judicial police officer, said he received a complaint from Ek Chantha, and that two of the attackers have already been identified.
Tin Lalin said that the attack was gang related and not politically motivated. “It was not related to politics,” he said.
Prince Thomico disputed the police assessment of the attack. “They didn’t find the aggressors. So how could they draw the conclusion that it was not political?”
Government spokesman and Information Minister Khieu Kanharith said that no political parties would bother with the SJF because it has no seats in the National Assembly. “If it was politically motivated, those people would not have only used their hands,” he said.
