The defense team for the former head of state of Cambodia’s brutal Khmer Rouge regime argued that his genocide conviction should be overturned. Khieu Samphan is the last living member of the regime’s leadership, responsible for some 1.7 million deaths.
In the second day of Khieu Samphan’s appeal, attorney Anta Guissé told judges that evidence of killings of Vietnamese minorities in Cambodian border provinces Prey Veng and Svay Rieng was weak, and questioned whether the slayings rose to the level of genocide.
She said, for example, that the court only heard from one witness about the Svay Rieng massacre, involving the killing of four Vietnamese families, who testified she had been “informed of these events, by people whose names she forgot.” Megan Hirst, an Australian attorney representing victims of the Khmer Rouge, questioned the defense’s argument, telling the court that hearsay testimony is often necessary in such cases.
The defendant is scheduled to address the tribunal on Thursday, the last day of the four-day hearing on his appeal. A verdict is not expected until next year.In their opening statements, prosecutors rejected the procedural arguments and emphasized the “totality” of the evidence against the defendant.
Dissent was usually met with death in the Khmer Rouge’s notorious “killing fields” or elsewhere, while starvation, overwork and medical neglect took many more lives.
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